Sanghieli and ninja acquaintances
by drunkenwerewolf
Summary: Halo x Naruto. The elites have returned, but now must realize the danger of the strife against the demon vessel. It will take their utmost care to avoid bringing danger upon themselves. Naruto also has his own problems he must defeat. Rated M for mature.
1. exit, stage left

A/N: I've decided to have another fic going for when I don't have inspiration for the other (course that would mean I would update this very commonly, heh ) I've also noticed a nearly complete and utter lack of halo/ anime crossovers that are even worth the effort of moving your mouse over, 90 percent (why arent percent signs allowed on here?) of them either don't have realistic personalities, make people carry WAY MORE ammo then a barge could possibly carry, or the person seems to just twist things around until it's a horrible abomination, sorry "Inuyasha 's war" but... Jesus, its more like aliens vs predator the a good halo crossover (in more ways then one). The other ten percent is actually alright, but the authors seem to have abandoned them, examples are a trigun one and an evangelion or however its spelled. But any who on with the fic.

Disclaimer: ... is this thing even necessary!? (lawyers appear and aim MA5B's at authors head) fine I don't own Halo or Naruto,

but I do have the halo books so if any of the freeloaders here who only watch naruto and don't know halo (hey I was looking at Naruto fics 3 weeks before I saw the first episode) have questions about the workings in said universe, feel free to ask, I will answer, if you want to know what something looks like, its quick, its your friend its google images.

_line omitted for being incredibly annoying and stupid. edit as of 8-4-07._

Final notes: this first chapter will focus mainly on the Elites. I will explain a few notes at the end of the chap, identify these with the numbers in parenthesis.

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Orda 'Zaktee swung his plasma sword full circle, instantly destroying the foolish flood parasites that had made the mistake of surrounding him. Their long congealed and dead blood spattered against his gold armor (_1_) given to him when he still thought of himself as a warrior of the covenant (_2_). He and several other elites had grouped together when the brutes began mercilessly slaughtering his comrades, the enemy had even stooped as low as to murder the unknowing councilors who had left to monitor the consecration of the holy icon.

After a long hour of bloody fighting, things only got worse, as flood (_3_) began to poor in through every thinkable entrance, and began to put their own masses into the melee. The once serene and peaceful garden, with its ponds and small amounts of alien wildlife, had become a broiling hell of plasma fire, piles of gore and blood, and horrors beyond imagination.

It was amazing the four of the original twenty were still alive.

Jira 'Sakaree ran out of ammunition for his needlers, pulled out his plasma rifle, and fired in to the chest of another flood form. This one used to be another elite like himself, its blue armor further making the similarity noticeable. Jira put the pitiful creature out of its slaving misery by tearing its chest open with his free hand and destroying the parasite inside with another wave of plasma.

He felt great sorrow as he realized a good number of the loathsome parasites were likely comrades he used to know, but he would no longer carry on conversations with those soldiers. A purple line shot past his head and put to death another flood form just behind him. Zuka 'Yamee stood a little ways in front of him with a cooling particle canon (the covenants version of a sniper rifle) the blueish steam quite noticeable next to his crimson armor.

"You should take care to not neglect the world around you Jira" Zuka advised, "it does not bode well for the continuation of your life."

"I shall take your advice" he said, before throwing a plasma grenade at a group of flood who were scrambling over to Zuka, only to be incinerated by said grenade. "And I shall return it to you."

Zuka only turned and looked at the burnt remains in silent annoyance that the talkative blue elite had once again turned his own advice back on him. _That is the third time he has done that. _He clicked his mandibles in annoyance and set his focus back on the battle.

Qwaar 'Jet, the spec. op. elite who had joined this fight halfway through, was currently adding his own blade to compliment Orda 's attacks. His strikes were more focused on speed and effectiveness though, while the field masters were focused more on brutality and force. Qwaar found the gold elites attacks wasteful, but they were doing the job, and he had more pertinent things to worry about. Qwaar looked worriedly at the far doors and flood continued to enter the zone, with no sign of ending.

"Brothers, the floods ranks swell with every passing cycle, we must retreat to the phantoms to fight another day." Qwaar stated before impaling a final Brute upon his sword.

"Are you suggesting we taint our honor with retreat?!" Orda yelled, he had already been dishonored by the brutes betrayal, retreat would only further degrade him.

"Would you suggest we merely through our lives away in a fight we serve no purpose in." Qwaar replied calmly, the spec. op. elite having a habit of being blunt and to the point.

Orda stopped to stare at Qwaar, trying to intimidate him into continuing the fight, but the elite held firm and met his gaze. Orda finally decided to relent, and motioned the others into formation, "Today, my brothers, we retreat from combat, only so we may live for vengeance against the Prophets for their betrayal of their most loyal warriors." Orda told his comrades. "Fall back to the ship platforms, we shall escape in a Phantom (_4)_."

The warriors all threw grenades to the nearest door, blasting any foe's out of their path, and they began to charge towards the exit, escaping the living hell.

The elites ran through the halls of the holy citadel, the previous morning, they gleamed like a purple obsidian, and were in prime condition. Now, with battle having torn through them, they were stained, twisted, and ruined masses of hollow alloy. The plasma still rained from every possible angle and direction, now supplemented with projectile human weapons, as more poor souls had be added to the floods massive army of puppets and flood marionettes combated various other warriors. The only thing keeping the elites intact were their own personal shields, but these wouldn't last long in this onslaught.

"This sectors edge is just ahead, I will jettison this wretched hive into the cold vacuum of space, clear the foe's from around me brothers." Zuka yelled. The others just gave a silent nod. He reached the holo panel floating just off the wall next to the door. He tapped furiously at the console as the others kept enemies wary using their plasma rifles.

Two minutes later the sector still wasn't on its way to oblivion, "Damn machines! There is another presence within this system, it is denying me access!" Zuka yelled.

"Let me handle it Zuka" Qwaar said, before leveling his rifle on the console and firing, "let us see if it denies that." sure enough klaxons began wailing through the hall ways, the elites merely left, and locked the doors, by locked I of course mean they sealed them shut with a wave of blue plasma. They then leisurely walked to the nearest phantom, unsealing the hatch and stepping inside. Orda and Qwaar moved to the forward compartment to pilot the vessel, and the others positioned themselves in the rear section.

"Lets take this vessel into slipspace (_5_), an meet up with our fleet." Orda suggested, before disengaging the magnetic clamps holding the ship to the platform, and moving slightly away from the platform. Qwaar then activated the necessary sequence as ordered.

"SIR! A large energy reading is coming from the halo's center! It is causing a slipspace anomaly! I cannot stop the sequence!" Qwaar yelled. (The energy is Halo's near activation at the end of Halo 2.)

Before Orda could respond the ship was pulled into slipspace, and into whatever unknown world lay ahead.

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Slipspace, it is a dark realm of nothingness, laws of physics change, reality seems to twist and distort, and it is utterly black, not even stars shine in the distance. The only problem with these facts is that the world around them now only matched half of those qualities, they were still moving at the great speed that slipspace allows, and nothing but what was in the ship seemed real, but they were surrounded by swirling storms of red, green, and blue, each cloud pressing against another, with and epicenter the ship was fast approaching.

"By the rings, what is that?" Zuka asked, in awe of the world around them. "Have we discovered the path to the Forerunners?"

"No, this is not how scripture described it, this is something else." Jira stated, "but what I wonder is what will happen to us when we hit that." he pointed to the VERY quickly approaching epicenter.

"Elites! Prepare for contact!" Orda Yelled.

As they hit the mass, every console, or computer of the Phantom malfunctioned, many of them exploding somewhat violently. The Main Screen managed to remain intact so the elites could see that the were once again headed for solid ground. The main issue was however, they were still moving pretty quick... and they had no means to slow their decent.

The field master was the first to realize the implications of this "Everyone to the back compartment, over-power your shields to help lessen the impact force!" he barked to the others.

The phantom continued to plummet, luckily not at the worst possible angle, as the armored belly and front of the vessel would take the brunt of the impact, the ships belly began to scratch the tree tops. After a moment the solid branches audibly snapped against the hull, before the ship finally started hitting the Tough trunks. The first trees began to create large dents and gashes in the purple armor before they were mercilessly cleaved away by the rest of the hull, but a few more tree's and the forward section of the ship collapsed, the reenforced wall being the only thing saving the elites. Finally the ship slammed to a halt, after hitting a particularly large boulder, but as Newton discovered the law of momentum, the elites inside did not stop, they hit the wall and landed in a comical pile draped over each other.

"... Zuka, I must calmly ask you to remove your finger from my eye." Orda said, without even moving to a more comfortable position.

"My apologies commander." he replied, while removing his finger from said eye.

The elites then crawled out of the ruined Phantom and gazed at their surroundings.

"Leader, I do not believe we are still on the sacred ring." Jira stated, while looking at a horizon, unable to find where it curves up to begin the circular shape of the Halos.

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"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!" Naruto yelled, pretty much expressing the feelings of the whole group. Even the typically calm, and lazy as hell Kakashi was staring wide eyed at the direction the strange object had stopped.

"Do you think we would know. Why don't you see for yourself, you might find intelligence." Sasuke said, effectively pissing off Naruto. Despite having little to no motivation to do so, especially considering that Naruto had effectively saved his life during the mission to protect Tazuna a few days ago.

Kakashi noted Naruto's annoyance, but stated, "Sasuke is right though, we should investigate that object."

"But Kakashi, what if its something dangerous?" Sakura asked, thinking of the incident with Zabuza. Not particularly wanting a repeat of such a dangerous situation.

"Well we will just have to keep our wits about us." Kakashi calmly replied, as he moved towards the column of dust in the air, waving his team to follow.

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"Commander, the ship is damaged beyond repair, and none of the weapons in the containment unit survived, we shall have to rely on our own that we were carrying with us at the time" Qwaar stated shortly after being ordered to investigate the ship.

Qwaar did one last check ofhis own equipment, which consisted of his two plasma rifles, and a plasma sword. Zuka mirrored such movements with his beam rifle and plasma rifle, as did Jira and Orda with their identical sets of a plasma rifle and a sword.They also had rationed out their grenades, and came up with six each.

Qwaar then continued his analysis of their situation, "Isaw a human settlement before we crashed, it should not be too far from this location."

"Are you suggesting we go to those heathens for help!" Orda yelled angrily. It wasn't hard to understand Qwaar's motives behind the statement, but that didn't make the gash in the leader's pride any better.

"We do not have the variety of choices to do otherwise." the purple armored elite replied, brushing an insect off his scaly hide, "and my shields have overloaded, I need the time to repair them."

Orda growled in annoyance, he had been proven incorrect by this elite a second time, AND IN FRONT OF HIS SUBORDINATES. "Alright, we shall head to the human city," he relented, but then as he was passing by he whispered "Do not show such insolence towards me in front of the others again, or I will see to it that your life is cut short."

"Yes commander."

And thus they started heading towards the city, unknowingly going toward team 7 head on.

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later still with the Elites.

"Leader, humans approach from directly ahead, I do not believe they are yet aware of our presence." Zuka warned.

Orda thinking of the possible threat the humans possess, advises "Engage active camouflage, reveal yourselves only if necessary, or if I give the order." with that, the elites began to fade from sight, until they were barely visible, the cloaking mechanisms working perfectly. They moved stealthily towards the Humans, intending to slip around them.

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The human group that was team 7, was lazily walking forward. Their formation had Kakashi in back, Sakura just in front and to the right of him, Naruto to the left, and Sasuke in front. They had been walking for awhile now, and nothing particularly threatening had shown up. Naruto was just about to complain that he was hungry when he saw something shimmer to the left, he kept looking and was about to pass it off when he saw a faint outline of... something moving past them, "Guys! I see something!" he exclaimed.

"Yeah right Naruto, you tried this last time." Sakura said, referencing his incident with the rabbit while they were on their last mission.

But then the figure made a careless mistake trying to escape the humans view, he stepped on a nice dry crunchy stick.

Kakashi instantly threw a kunai in front of the figure, "Show yourself, we know you're there."

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Jira then looked to Orda for his order, and whispered into his com, "Sir, the do not seem like the normal human soldiers, they do not have normal weapons."

Orda considered this a moment the gave Jira the OK to decloak so as to delay hostilities with the humans. What he wasn't expecting was the humans reactions.

"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING!" the blond haired human yelled.

Definitely not normal human soldiers. They would know an elite when they see it, "Zuka, encircle the humans and deactivate active camouflage, Qwaar, you stay cloaked and out of harms way." Orda whispered into his com line.

As Orda and Zuka appeared around the humans, they noticed that only one of the group was an adult, the rest were children, but they all seemed ready to charge his elites with simple knives. Odd that they seemed so readily prepared for combat, though it was more so amusing as they would never get past the shields.

"Surrender human, and we will let you and your children leave this place alive." Orda commanded.

At this the adult started to laugh, the girl looked mortified, the blond joined the adult in laughter, and the black haired boy smirked. Not the result that ANY war hardened commander would expect.

"They aren't my kids, I'm just their teacher." the adult said after calming down.

"And what is it that you teach" the elite asked, still not the slightest bit amused.

"The art of the ninja." he replied.

The elite had no idea what in the name of the gods that was so he stared confusedly. He continued his questioning with a mild jab to his voice for the sake of his own amusement, "Is that a human term for learning how best to get oneself killed, because your apparent efforts of defense are really quite without point."

"Heh, we all have lethal knives, and you have hunks of metal that glow at the end, what are you talking about?" Naruto asked, being the poor hyperactive moron he is a majority of the time. The elite simply replied by firing a single bolt at the ground in front of the blond, burning away the grass and fallen leaves instantly, and turning the ground beneath into a small chunk of glass.

"YAAHH! What is that!" Naruto yelled, for the umpteenth time that day.

"Plasma, you would do well to be wary of it." Orda replied. Naruto, not being stupid chose that time to shut up.

"Leader." Qwaar said over the com, "it may not be wise to make enemies of the residents of the town in which we will be staying."

_At least he did it privately_. "I may have over compensated for our lack of stealth, and recent events still well up anger inside me, but we do not seek your lives, rather we need shelter until our equipment is repaired, and we can obtain a new slipspace capable ship."

Now it was the humans turn to gawk in confusion, "What is slipspace?" they asked in unison, even Sasuke, whom normally wouldn't make any comments.

Once again the elites turn, "How is it you travel from planet to planet without a proper means of travel!?"

"We, um... don't." Naruto simply and truthfully stated.

Jira sighed and stated, "I think that our stay on this world will be much longer then desired."

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A/N: that had to be the longest chapter I have ever written, DAYUM. Remember to review, advice, and questions are welcome, but don't be some Sony fan-bastard and just say something like; HALO IS FOR 70053R5 or something.

1. Elites ranks are marked by the color of their armor, their ranks in turn are determined by the numbers of kills they obtain in the battlefield, it goes in this order

blue least experience (by comparison, you still don't want to piss this guy off.)

Red veteran better shielding and armor then blue's but not by much, higher in rank

black, purple special operations... im not sure which is better, red or them, I don't see much of these guys, they appear to be more stealthy then the others... sometimes... they still like to kill stuff... a lot.

White operation commanders usually dispatched to lead troops in various missions, DO NOT PISS THESE GUYS OFF! They are the most dangerous warriors short of the Zealots.

Gold Zealot, ship master, these soldiers truly deserve their namesake (the first one) they will not let anything get in their way, they will charge at a tank and win (unless they're using a sword... then their screwed)

White with headdress Councilor, the leadership caste among Elites. By no means does this mean they are weak however, as it is quite the opposite.

2. Covenant, is the term for the whole of the alien castes that make up the "alliance" (in quotes 'cause a civil war breaks out)the covenant, before the civil conflict, were at war with humanity, and they had already destroyed dozens of our worlds from orbit, using a method know as glassing, their fleet would lob plasma torpedoes at the planet until it was a ball of molten glass.

3. The flood are parasitic aliens that have lived for millennia, the infest hosts that meet a certain quota of body mass and sentience, and turn them into twisted mutated slaves, their only thought is to spread, think of them as a virus, and we are cells. They seem to have an appetite for humans and elites.

4. Phantom, this is a medium sized dropship that the covenant military uses for... well... dropship purposes.

5. Slipspace is the thing halo has instead of hyper speed or light speed or warp 5 or whatever.


	2. the long hated PLOT FODDER

AN: well, I hope that im not writing this chapter too soon, as I have not yet seen any reviews, but I seek to keep this updated frequently until I pick up some persistent readers. Well, as with last chapter, if you have questions, in this subject I will be quite willing to answer them... wow, that's the least cursing I've ever had in and authors note.

"_Italics" _is talking in covenant.

Also I tried a sort of awareness system when writing from the human point of view, im not sure it worked so well.

And I tried separating mid notes from the text with parentheses, hope fanfiction doesn't cut it.

And if anyone ever reviews this, I'll be very pleased, you do know I can tell when you are reading this right? I've gotten a ton of hits but not a single review, besides one from a friend at school... I'm a little annoyed. Less annoyed then when I had ten times as many reviews for a shitty fic then my good one, but still annoyed... though I am interested in finding out why so many inuyasha people are into kagome turning into some demonic creature...

Actually, on second thought, I'm not... kinky perverts.

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As the group of elites and humans walked towards the city, one species wondered what the Hokage's decision would be on the elites residence, the other wondered what a Hokage was. The humans of team 7, had already tried to use their leverage of being citizens of the village, to try and confiscate the elites weapons. After several guns were pointed to Kakashi's head , however; they realized the elites didn't care, they were NOT giving up said weapons.

The creature in the red armor was quite vigorously, polishing his weapon with a strange gel like substance he had removed from a small compartment in his armor. The small, almost unnoticeable scratches, were filled with the substance, which then began so solidify, and make the rifle sheen with its clean, smooth surface. One of the other creatures, the one in blue armor, said some words in an alien tongue to the red armored one, whom immediately, barked back a indignant response. Kakashi, watched the small argument begin between the two... whatever they were, and although he couldn't understand the words, he found it quite amusing.

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"_You polish that sniper rifle so vigorously, that I am surprised your hands do not meld with its surface." _the blue elite joked. Being talkative, he had to comment on Zuka's apparent fascination with his gun.

"_Be quiet! I only wish to ensure that this weapon remains functional."_ he replied.

"_then why is it that you have not broken your view of it to even talk with me?"_ Jira asked, not the least bit convinced the other elite didn't have an obsession with his weapon.

Zuka the turned his head to face Jira, "_I am removing it now to speak with you._" He stated.

"_Your eye's are still trained on its surface, you still are not removing your view."_ Jira countered, now almost assured the other had an obsession.

Zuka, not having another response, merely grumbled, and focused his attention on a small speck of debris that had the audacity to land on his freshly polished rifle.

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Kakashi watched the short argument come to an end, apparently the blue armored one being victorious. _Well that was interesting while it lasted, even if I ... couldn't... understand...them, oh crap. The gates guards are likely to think these things are demons and kill them on site._ He thought it over in his head for a moment to decide if he cared, and decided he did. The one with the golden armor appeared to be the leader of the group.

"Hey, you, the one in gold armor." Kakashi tried to get the elites attention.

"What is it human?" Orda said, curious of why the human was choosing now to speak.

"He has a name." Naruto stated, though the elite ignored him.

"I am noticing your... appearance, and I think our guards may be a bit jumpy, they may try to attack you when we approach the gates, I'm not really sure what you want to do about that."

"Do not worry, we can take their meager strikes, assuming they are armed as you are."

"They are well trained, I do not believe their attacks will be meager as you seem to think." Kakashi said, annoyed at the creatures apparent lack of concern.

"If you truly fear for our lives, I am greatly humored, I will send a scout ahead to judge the... opposition." he relented, though he still seemed rather relaxed.

"Don't worry too much, they're nowhere as tough as me, I'm the top ninja in Konoha!" Naruto bragged. (Come on, he probably would say that, however annoying it would be)

"More like top moron." Sasuke countered.

"Least I'm not some overrated slug."

"NARUTO!" Sakura yelled, appalled someone would dare insult her lovely Sasuke. (Once again, annoying, but likely)

A couple of minutes passed before Kakashi was getting impatient waiting for the scout to be sent. "When are you going to send that scout. The gate is-"

"Only 3 units ahead, with four guards. Two on each side, up on the wall." the elite simply replied, deciding to toy around with the human a bit.

"B-but how?" Kakashi stammered out, not knowing that the elites had a fourth member.

"We have our methods, though I shall not speak of them, incase you humans double cross us." Orda replied, still not trusting of the humans, he had fought them too many times to trust them with the apparent fact they had never seen an elite.

"Well regardless we still have to worry about their reactions."

"Once again, your worries are misplaced." Orda said, "we can simply reactivate our camouflage."

"But they will sense the chakra." Sakura stated, "anything as complex as that jutsu you used has to build up a lot of chakra, at least when its being performed."

The elites stared at Sakura like she was nuts, and they mostly believed she was. "What is chakra?" Jira asked the question on all their minds. Even Qwaar, who had been listening in through the COMs was curious as to what it was.

"How did you do that invisibility thing then if you didn't use chakra!" Naruto questioned, once again failing to understand these things that had come out of nowhere.

"Regardless" Kakashi said before the aliens could respond, "that isn't an option. We still cant just let you approach our Hokage without at least some escort and without an alert to him."

The elite, catching the human's meaning let out a hollering laugh, "you think we would disgrace ourselves with such an underhanded assassination as that! Only a weakling would dishonor himself as such."

"_Correction, the prophets, have on occasion ordered just that kind of act in the past, and it is likely that's how the brutes killed the councilors." _Qwaar said, just a little too loudly over the coms.

"Ah, that's how you knew of our defenses, you have another member." Kakashi realized, and somehow, even with so little of his face showing, gave a triumphant smirk that clearly said 'HA. I got you.' (Mid note: yeah, even though I don't like some of the spontaneous topic dropping in Naruto and other anime, I'm not going to deny it's a good excuse to move on to things you care about. At least I'm not stating the same thing over and over again, cough DBZ cough)

"Forgive the insubordination, but it might have been wise to deactivate your local communication tap." Jira stated.

"Yeah, even Naruto would know that." Sakura continued.

"Yeah... HEY!" said ninja replied.

Sasuke sweatdrop

Zuka then stared at the spontaneous mass of water that appeared by Sasuke 's head, dumbstruck by the impossibility of such a thing existing. (Sorry had to ')

"of all the warriors I could get in my squad, it's the ones who have no worry in criticizing their field master." Orda moaned.

"And we have to live with these humans for the time being. I do hope that Qwaar was incorrect in assuming the phantom was damaged beyond repair."

"What?" the leaf nins asked.

"Jira, you're not helping, and you just spoke out all of our weaknesses to the humans you fool." Zuka chastised.

"I thought we dropped hostilities when the brutes betrayed us." Jira replied.

Blank stares from the ninjas.

"... Jira, close you jaws before I bind them shut." Orda commanded. "_Qwaar, we're entering the village, regroup with us at the gates."_

The rest of the journey went pretty well, all things considered (I know blatant copout). The guards at the gate had insisted that two full squads of "escorts" follow the new arrivals. And as they passed through the village, many people made fearful whispers about the "horrid creatures that came back with the demon child". The elites, hearing such remarks, were puzzled, was this boy like the human demon that the former covenant so greatly feared... no, impossible.

The elites, becoming annoyed with the constant remarks, (which were amazingly kept to whispers for the most part) were almost overjoyed when they saw that they had reached the building that contained the "Hokage"... almost.

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and behold! The crappy cliff hanger. I know I didn't really have much dialog between my oc's and the Naruto characters, but I still haven't had a chance to fully feel them out so I can write them well, and I cant really have them talking like they're old friends if they just saw gasp aliens.

Hope the next chapter is faster.


	3. of elites and ramen

A/N: well... im getting a little irritated, just as many people have seen this as AOD, even though this is much younger, and I have only 1/7 th of the reviews I have for that, I accept anonymous reviews, so I know that isn't the reason, I put time and effort into this fic, do you WANT crack or something?

Is it the fact it has covenant who don't talk like the kids on live, or that it isn't chief centric? Or is it that it isn't constant violence? Does plot and character development bore the hell out of this audience?

Well enough of my subtle ranting (sarcasm), just review people, I get some ideas on how to progress from criticism and suggestions. And note, unlike some crossovers, elements from both worlds will play major parts in this fic.

And now for the reviewers

Maiko: 6 hours is a little excessive, but to answer your wonders, both Gai and Lee will be present, and the elites shall add to our theories on how their incredible weirdness, and eyebrows, are possible, but I have to ask, with my little experience, what is jinchuuriki or however you spell it? I don't listen to the people talk on the eps I watch (found a free site, woo) I just read the subtitles, so I don't have a clue as too what Jinchuuriki are.

Sajuuk-The Great Maker: ANOTHER FELLOW HIGARRIAN COMRADE! I shall honor you to the point I forget everything you said in your review.

Dragon man 180: please stop wondering in your reviews, otherwise it'll look like im copying off of you. You hit 4 out of 4 points in that review.

And to explain the lack of a language barrier, the elites are a much more educated society then our own, to them, our languages are merely the rambling ooks of savages, so learning them was simple.

I didn't mention this earlier, but this is set during the, practically five minute period before the chuunin exams

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hunger... that was what he felt, all he knew now. The station had scuttled a large portion of it's mass, and taken his sustenance with it. It had also injured him directly, most of his body had been torn away by explosives, desperate soldiers, and blast doors closing on him. He had abandoned his tomb, in search of food, and he had paid dearly for it.

Besides this the artificial intelligence had fooled him into letting down his guard, and then escaped to some other inaccessible computer system. The foolish device hadn't noticed him tampering with her files before she had left however, and would be greatly damaged.

However if he didn't leave this place soon, he would probably, finally die. He had to find another way off of this station. He swipes a large, powerful tentacle and crushes an group of jackals trying to run away. After absorbing these morsels, he decided to head to the docks, if he couldn't escape there, he may at least lie in wait for food.

He then noticed something, a strange gate, similar to slipspace, yet not as volatile. While it was yet too small, he could use one of the nearby ships generators to enlarge it.

It was merely a matter of time.

He let out a moaning roar, which would gather his minions upon him.

The flood will always flow to new realms.

(So I like the gravemind, sue me)

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"You will have to leave your weapons here, the Hokage will then see you." some random plot device said.

"Jira, Qwaar, you stay here, I will speak with the humans."

"And if one tries to steal one of our weapons?" Jira asked.

"Then kill him." Orda replied as he set down his sword and plasma rifle, before carefully setting down his grenades. He then motioned Zuka to follow him, as they left team 7 in the lobby, were Kakashi groaned, expecting to have to do a good deal of paperwork later. Three shinobi escorted the duo down the hall to a set of sliding doors, all the while, looking like they would rather be facing down an angry old woman then having anything to do with these things.

The paper doors slid back to reveal a very, surprised human in formal robes, whom two seconds after the door being opened looked at his teacup, wondering if it was poisoned. "Lord Hokage, the... uh... are here to speak with you." said another ninja, the elites simply stood there not about to kneel to a human (so we aren't at war anymore, doesn't mean they like us).

After a long pause, the Hokage said, "I suppose you are here for a reason."

_That much should be obvious, redundant human twit, _Orda thought. "Yes, we seek shelter till we can find a way to return to our fleet."

"That is all?" the Hokage surprisedly (is that a word?) asked, why did these things only want that, why do they need it.

"If possible, we would also ask for your manpower to help recover our ship from the forest, to see if it has anything left to be salvaged."

The hokage blinked repeatedly, amazed that's all the "demons"as he had deduced they must be, seemed to want,"Seeing as how you have not yet seemed to take any hostilities towards this village or its occupants, I suppose I could not deny you either of those requests. I somehow doubt you have money to pay for it though."

"What?" Orda inquired. _Humans are strange, if something is approved within the covenant, it would normally be accommodated for immediately, but here we have to "pay" what ever that means._

"Do you not have usable currency with you?"

"No, I am unsure of your culture, I merely studied its languages, and some cultural items, but nothing more, but I believe we do not have acceptable currency." Orda truthfully replied, suddenly feeling very out of place.

"I see, but I cannot simply have you live off of our welfare system, it is overused as it is, but there are other means of paying, for example, you could apprentice yourselves with one of our genin squads." he said, gesturing towards the konoha pride poster on the wall, which he secretly wanted incinerated for its ugliness. "Or you could work with one of the merchant shops."

"We will not be simple store hands, that's grunts work."

"Well then, I could assign you to a genin team, but with that there is a small chance of death, or injury."

"We are accustomed to that, we are quite experienced in combat."

This last statement worried the hokage, but he couldn't act upon it with their lack of hostility. "Well, seeing as how you've already met them, and they are present, I guess would be best to assign you to team 7."

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LLL

Kakashi lets out a large shudder.

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LLL

"Very well. And what of our residence, and the retrieval of our craft?"

"I shall have some workers sent out to see about its recovery. And I will have Sakura show you our available apartments, I apologize but with coming events, those will be sparse." the hokage said, "and also do to said events, I must draw this meeting to a close, and meet with the jounin instructors of our genin teams. Kakashi can teach you about our line of work afterwards."

777

Kakashi once again shuddered

Sasuke, then stood up from the bench, and said, "I'm going out for a walk."

Naruto then yelled after him, "but don't you think they're gonna want to talk to us!"

"Not our problem, that's Kakashi 's job."

"Well whatever, I'm staying."

Sakura merely watched this exchange, not knowing who to side with. By the time she had decided, Sasuke had already left. Then the door down the hallway slid open, and two elites and two chuunin walked out and towards them. Sakura then sat attentively, Kakashi merely looked slightly less bored, and Naruto was busy contemplating if he would be able to find an excuse to go to Ichiraku.

The chuunin walked over to Kakashi and whispered into his ear, and he then said just a little too loudly "oh yeah, I'm supposed to go to that meeting."

"You moron! You forgot you had a meeting with the hokage!" both genin yelled.

The elites, now having regrouped, and retrieved their weapons with no incident, besides a guard relieving himself out of fear when the red armored one had a suspicion that his rifle had been tampered with. The crimson elite then walked over to the remaining members of squad 7 and asked, "Which of you is Sakura?"

Sakura questioningly looked over before replying, "I'm Sakura."

"I was informed that you would be the one showing us to our quarters."

"Huh? Why me."

"I am assuming it is because your teacher is in the next meeting, and you are the most competent of your group."

"Well I don't know where your quarters are?"

"I was informed that we would find them in a, what was the word, hotel?"

"Oh, the tourists district. I guess he gave you some forms."

The elite patted a compartment on his armor in confirmation.

"Well I guess I should show you your choices then." she said before signaling him to follow her as she turned towards the exit. He then gave a wort(1) to the others to come over. Naruto merely followed out of curiosity and a lack of anything better to do.

As they were leaving however, Naruto noticed Konahamaru though and alley, being held up by a weird guy dressed in black with a large object wrapped in what he would describe as toilet paper. He then charged up and yelled, "Konahamaru! Hey, big bum in the tights, you better let my friend go or I'll beat you to a pulp."

"I hate kids, they come out of the woodwork like cockroaches." he said, while shaking Konahamaru for emphasis.

Sakura in the mean time had jumped next to Naruto. The Elites, though they hadn't been noticed yet, were also coming down the alley, more out of annoyance then a desire to help, though they were slightly appalled that this human was picking on a youngling. Sasuke also picked this time to coincidentally come back from his walk and act cool by jumping into a tree. (As opposed to getting into a position that he might actually help if things got outa hand... dipshit.) But of course, Sakura still started gazing at him in admiration.

"Well even more moronic sheep. Hey Temari, wanna have some fun with these guys." Temari simply shrugged in response, Kankuro grinned and tossed Konohamaru over towards the side, were a pack of small children came to his aid. Sakura then also ran over to Konohamaru, and no longer obscured the elites from view.

"Wha- what the hell are those!" Kankuro yelled, reaching towards the object on his back. The elites seeing this, were wary that it was likely a weapon, and readied there plasma rifles.

Kankuro then was about to un-sling the device from his back before he was stopped by a voice, "That's enough Kankuro, your going to embarrass our village."

Kankuro, then stopped, and ignored the elites completely to stare at the appearance of his brother in the same tree as Sasuke, "Gaara! What are you doing here!"

"Stopping you from ruining our reputation."

The elites, were concerned about the arrival of the new individual. He hadn't shown up on their motion sensors for one, and the second problem was the most prevalent at the moment, he was standing, upside-down, on the bottom of a branch in the tree.

"R-right, sorry Gaara, I shouldn't have done that, it wa-"

"Shut up Kankuro, you're irritating me."

Kankuro, quickly complied, and gulped in fear.

"I apologize if he caused trouble." he said, jumping down between the other two ninja. "Lets go."

They then began to walk away before Sasuke jumped down and yelled, "hold it! Identify yourself. The one with the gord on his back."

Said individual then turned around and gazed at Sasuke

"My name is Gaara, and you have interested me as well, what is your name."

"My name is Sasuke Uchiha."

Naruto then butted in, "I bet your dying to know my name too right."

"I couldn't care less. I am more interested in the creatures behind you, but at the moment I don't have time to deal with this." he then walked off with his two companions, and the rounded the corner, and were out of sight.

Sasuke then too, walked off, down another alley, one the children were already long gone through. Sakura ran and yelled after him "Sasuke wait up!" and then, they too were out of sight, leaving Naruto a moment to sigh, then realize.

"HEY SAKURA YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO SHOW THEM TO THE APARTMENTS!" but alas, they were already gone. (even though as ninja they should have trained their senses enough to hear him, but alas, another anime cliche)

"Well human, I suppose our guide is out of reach, that leaves you with the duty of finding our corders."

"WHAT! But, I, _sigh_ well, I DO know where the apartments are, follow me."

_Timeskip_

"Well, here's the most likely place that wont give you too much trouble, they didn't give me problems when I lived here, I had to move though cause other people complained about my sudden outbursts when I walked out the door everyday." Naruto said, "so what are your names anyway, it gets kinda awkward not knowing what to call you."

The gold armored one then gestured to himself and said "my name is Orda 'Zaktee (FYI, pronounced, Za-ka-tee)"

then the black armored one simple stated, "Qwaar 'Jet."

The red armored one followed with "Zuka Yamaee (pronounced Yeah-ma-E)"

then the blue armored one finished, "Jira Zakaree"

"So are you all related, or somin, those names sound a lot alike."

Orda then replied, "no, we name ourselves in a different manner then you humans, when an elite is born, he only has his family name , he has to earn his descriptive name the first syllable of his surname, then he has to come of age before he gains his own personal name, and the last syllable is determined by his employment."

"That's deep."

"Not particularly, you humans just are primitive, and don't place proper honor to names."

Then, a loud growl, that sounded like an angered beast, made its way across the group, who's eyes slowly turned toward... Jira's stomach. "My apologies, I was on the third latch, and subsequently missed the distribution of rations when the attack started."

"Well, I was about to go to my favorite restaurant. I guess I could get you something."

"My thanks human, go ahead and secure the room brothers, I will join you later. (2)" the other elites nodded, and walked into the automatic doors to the hotel.

"To Ichiraku!" Naruto yelled.

777

after a very awkward greeting from the owner and ayame (hope I got that right), in which the elite had nearly been scolded with hot water had his shield not blocked it, the elite had ordered the pork ramen (as a random pick), while Naruto had ordered the miso.

Naruto looked curiously at the blue elite and asked, "So, what's your story." he was already mostly casual about the elites appearance.

"My story?" he echoed back, confused.

"Yeah you know, what are you, what do you do, why are you here."

"I see, well, I am- was a warrior of the holy covenant, newly consummated from my training. And I had been assigned as part of High Charity's own garrison, a great honor. I had hopes of ascending through the ranks on the garrisons excursions to combat zones, until I had reached a memorable position, maybe as a field master or zealot. But such desires are moot now, the covenant has betrayed the elites, and I have to wonder if we, as a race will even survive. We are superior warriors, but the covenant has more supplies, resources, manpower, and ships. They may even simply bombard our home world from orbit."

Naruto, who had been listening attentively (I don't like his hyperactivity, but I'm no going to bash it the whole time.) Decided to interject, "But didn't anyone else help you?"

"Oh yes. The hunters and grunts have assisted us, effectively destroying their own positions in the covenant, and dooming themselves as well. The hunters don't care, merely wishing for revenge for all their bond brothers lost to frivolous desires of the prophets. The grunts surprise me, they are cowardly, and honor-less, yet they too came to our aid, I must wonder why."

Naruto was intrigued about this, but was kept from responding when the ramen arrived, and what fool would talk when there's ramen to be eaten. "Itomakidasu!" and thus Naruto picked up his chopsticks and dug in.

The elite, however, hesitated... how would he pick up the chopsticks when he has two thumbs on each hand. After several failed attempts, he managed to pick them up, only to meet with the obstacle of using them to pick up the noodles in the broth. Perhaps if he rounded the up to the left, no... maybe flanking them down the side, no they evaded expertly, and thus joined the battle of the noodles, only to end when some were overwhelmed by repeated attacks by the wooden eating utensils. The noodles regained their victory when their foe realized... he had no lips, or a lower jaw for that manner. All was lost however, when he lost patience, and defeated his enemy by diving down, and latching his mandibles around the bowl, and gulping down his enemies, who he noted, were quite tasty.

During this skirmish however, the human had eaten three bowls, and asked if he wanted anymore. After denying, the human paid, and said he was going home. Jira decided to do likewise.

777

Sakura walked into her home, having lost Sasuke some time ago, and was met by a petrified looking mother. "Oh thank god! You're home safe and sound."

"Woah! What are you talking about? Did something happen?"

"Honey didn't you hear? There are demons in the village, and I heard they were with that Uzumaki boy!"

"What? Demo– OH SHIT! I WAS SUPPOSED TO SHOW THEM TO THEIR HOTEL!" she said before turning around and getting ready to bolt out the door.

Her mother merely stood dumbstruck, "hotel?"

But Sakura was already out the door, only to slam into something about two feet from the door.

"Oh hey Sakura. Why are you in such a hurry." the mass said, in a voice that identified itself as Naruto's.

"I was supposed to show those guys to a hotel!"

"Oh I already took care of it, I was just on my way back from Ichiraku after buying one of them ramen."

"oh." not having anything better to say, and annoyed that Naruto had even shown more responsibility then her.

"Well its getting late so see ya" he said, before jumping off in ninja fashion. (Which couldn't he have done to get home instantly as opposed to using the sidewalk, oh well, I'll stop pointing out my own Hypocreaceae)

And thus the kunoichi let the matter drop, before continuing past her still dumbstruck mother, who could not believe that instead of killing the demons or running in fear, her daughter was supposed to find them a hotel. Her mother at that point feinted, to bee found later by a father just getting home from a mission.

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kind of shitty ending I know, but that was the best place for this chap to end.

(1) wort- something elites do... yeah, I know, shitty explanation, its also "go" backwards

(2) notice the formality with anything they say, it's a bitch to right so please, nobody complain.


	4. The exam

A/N: I'm on a roll, at the moment anyway, two chapters in a row, a new record... right... well anyway. Another chapter of the back up fic, as opposed to my major fic... hey, I lack inspiration, wtf am I supposed to do. Song and dance (starts the "peanut butter jelly" song) eh no.

and to dragon man 180, I've outlined the next few chapters, you will like the one after this one, chapter 5 is something you'll like.

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Kakashi had just recommended his team for the chuunin exam, and had put down a rather livid Iruka, _never seen him like that_, and was about to shut off his attention span for the rest of the meeting when the hokage suddenly spoke up.

"Kakashi, as for another matter, you're team will have four new members from now on, they are too new to participate in the chuunin exams, but I would like you to accept them to your squad."

Kakashi suddenly had a very bad feeling, "and these members are?" he asked in a worried tone.

"Those newcomers in the village, it would seem they cant pay for some of our services, but are willing to work off the debt, and have been assigned to your team for missions."

"Can I assume by newcomers you mean the aliens?" _I hate being right_.

the rest of the jounin heard this and snickered at the moronic assumption that the great copy ninja had apparently made. Until the hokage said, "yes." and they all had to pick up their jaws from the floor. "I see you all missed the memo, I put it in the briefing manual you're all supposed to read monthly." at this, multiple people made innocent whistling noises, shifted eyes, and or just laughed in a manner that said, 'I don't ever read those'. The hokage, was rightfully irritated, and pinched the bridge of his nose and dismissed the meeting.

Kakashi merely decided to let the matter slide until the morning, and tell his team to meet him at the bridge by their training grounds, he would get the... whatever in the morning. In the mean time however, a new volume of make out paradise was out, and he had to secure a copy for the coming exams. It was a matter of life and death.

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The genin stood on the bridge, having had their various disturbing revelations at what they gave up to come on time. Once such conversations were over however, they noticed the absence of their sensei, and wondered where he was. At the time they dismissed the matter, thinking that a trained veteran such as himself couldn't take too long to arrive.

4 hours... they had been waiting here for 4 hours, Kakashi had said he would meet them here on time today, but he had not arrived. To say the least, Naruto Uzumaki and Sakura Haruno were pissed. They were just about to have an anger induced aneurism. Sasuke was none to pleased either, but luckily, the copy ninja Kakashi chose that time to jump to the top of one of the crosses over the bridge.

Sakura and Naruto then both yelled in unison, "YOU'RE LATE!"

To which Kakashi replied, "I'm sorry, but I had to guide some new students to their teams for training, and was delayed." he waved his hand to imply they should send all their blame to the students instead of him

"LIAR! There's no one in Konoha who's so stupid it would take that long" Sakura yelled.

"Actually he speaks the truth." a golden armored elite said as he walked around the corner, followed closely by his companions.

Sakura then said, "then I guess it's okay he's four hours late. It would take awhile to guide someone THAT foreign."

The red armored one gawked at that and stated, "but he only met up with us twenty minutes ago."

The elites glared at Kakashi, not being in the mood for their guide to be acting so foolishly. The genin merely glared at Kakashi. Both parties relented after a bit, realizing that it was having no effect one eyed ninja.

Naruto then saw fit to make a deduction, "well, I guess this means we're in the same squad now Jira." Jira merely nodded, Naruto was somewhat pleased, he liked the guy, or... did he even know which it was, na, has to be a guy. Naruto then took the time to note that... well... the elite wasn't exactly wearing any pants, but there wasn't anything there, _best not think about it too much, im too young to scar myself for life now._

"Well, while im here, I have something to give you three." he then reached into the left pocket on his vest, and pulled out three forms. "Here are nomination forms for the chuunin exam." the elites looked on curiously in the background, obviously having no idea what he was talking about, with their lack of knowledge of ninja culture.

Naruto seemed to be the most enthusiastic person regarding the forms, "THANK YOU THANK YOU!! I LOVE YOU KAKASHI!!!" he yelled, before latching himself onto Kakashi.

"Hey! Get off, don't slobber on my vest." he said, before shoving Naruto off himself, and wiping off some spittle. "Now if you accept the offers, go to room 301 on the third floor of the main office, and turn in those forms by 6 days time."

"Chuunin exams, chuunin exams!" Naruto began to monologue, as he would for the next few hours. The group then dispersed, Sasuke just hmphing, as if he needed to act bad-ass or something. In reality, it would make him look arrogant, and most smart people would dismiss his input in situations for bias.

"And as for you all, I believe its time to see what your abilities are, but first, I'd like to know your names. Go by descending rank."

The gold elite snapped to attention first, clearly stating his name in a crisp though low tone "Orda 'Zaktee."

The spec op elite quickly inserted his name in an equally crisp tone, before Zuka could imply authority over him, "Qwaar 'Jet."

The major shot a look at Qwaar, before giving his name in a more humbled tone, "Zuka 'Yamee."

Jira gave his name in a more relaxed manner, and didn't even think to give proper posture to the human, despite the actions of his superiors "Jira 'Sakaree."

Kakashi gave a nod, closing his eye, then saying "All right, then I believe its time to-"

"I must interrupt," Orda said, "Zuka and myself have agreed to meet with the recovery team for our vessel in ten minutes, so we must take our leave."

"And I have to conduct repairs to my armor's systems, so I must head back to the hotel." Qwaar continued, before turning around and leaving."

Kakashi then took stock and saw that only Jira was left. "_Sigh_, well, I guess we ought to get going with our training at least." Jira simply nodded, and they walked over to the nearest training area.

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"Careful with the hull! Its damaged enough as it is." Orda yelled out at the human recover team. They had brought only two modified backhoes, a large forklift, and a flatbed, and expected to lift the multi ton aircraft without too much difficulty. "No!, your going to further damaged the gravity elevator, and the stabilizer is sheering off!"

The forklift and backhoe crews, responded by kindly showing him their middle fingers, and dropped the ship with a sickening crash on the flatbed.

The elite, recognizing this gesture, promptly walked over there, yanked a human from his seat, and slammed him against a tree. He then pulled out his sword, activated it, and slammed in into the tree with the humans neck between the two blades. "The only thing keeping me from slaughtering you here and now, is my patience, and the fact it may cause the village to attempt to kill us." the elite spat out to the humans face, "My patience is wearing thin, and if I were you, I would not count on deterrence to save yourself!"

The humans response was a nod, and an added moisture to his pants, which only added to the elites humor as he looked at the humans scared beyond belief face. He deactivated the blade, and let the human grunt as he dropped to the ground, the fall from being held at eye level with the much taller elite was none too comfortable.

"Well sir, at least all the parts are finally on the vehicle, and they are _mostly_ intact." Zuka stated, hoping to prevent any other outbursts.

"Now to get this heap to the warehouse." the flatbed driver said.

Orda merely responded by dropping his head, gritting his teeth, and clenching his fist in furious anger. Zuka looked on, annoyed that his field master was already angered after he had just calmed him down. A particularly stupid human then chose that moment to walk over to the livid elite.

"Hey, squid-face, time to move!" he yelled, before the elite, promptly punched him in the face, sending him flying back, and took his seat in the forklift, before he was joined by Zuka riding on the side, hanging off the side mirror's scaffolding.

"You seem to have fallen human, due to this delay, you have to manage all the other equipment, and insure it is documented at the office." Orda kindly informed the human, who was too dazed to reply, the other villagers just remained silent with fake smiles, hoping not to get the shit kicked out of them by a pissed elite.

Zuka the gestured with his hand, gave a "WORT!" and they were off, the humans having assumed the meaning of the word.

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ZAP!

Qwaar, once again, showed his joy in maintaining machinery by giving a loud, "DAMMIT! That hurt, infernal device!" to say the least, Qwaar hated machines, almost as much as he hated his superiors, sniveling grunts, the loud rumblings of hunters, and arrogant morons. He turned the forceps that were in his maintenance kit again, attempting to get the plasma arc to flow into the third conduit properly again, the problem was it kept arcing towards his face for some reason or other.

Twist, ZAP!

"DAMN!"

777

Jira was having great fun in his exercises. The one known as Kakashi had stated that he would test him (Jira) to see in what area's he needed training most. Then Kakashi had jumped and hidden himself in the tree's, and was throwing kunai, shuriken, and whatever he could at Jira. He found it amusing because he hadn't been hit yet, his motion tracker alerted him to the approach of the metal knives, and he dodged, shot, or sliced them as they came at him. He seemed to be making the human realize his skill.

LLL

Kakashi was appalled at the slow speed the elite was moving at. His movements were easy to read and sloppy, he had to destroy most of the knives because it seemed he couldn't dodge them all. It also seemed they weren't bluffing earlier, because it looked like he couldn't do any jutsu.

Kakashi finally saw fit to end this ploy, maybe some humiliation would help the elite focus on training in the future. With that, Kakashi lunged from the shrubbery, moved in behind the elite, yelling, "Thousand years of pain technique!" and press his fingers to the elites rump.

Only to have a spider-web of blue lines pop up and stop his finger, with a faint hiss of static electricity. He then saw were the elite made up in his speed, as he spun around, and punched Kakashi in the stomach, stunning him and knocking him breathless, before punching his head straight into the ground.

_That, hurt... a lot._ "Alright, I've got what a need, I'll have a proper training schedule for you tomorrow." he grunted out, picking himself up from the ground.

Jira gave a satisfied wort, and walked back to the apartment. Deciding that he might check how well Qwaar was coming along in his maintenance.

Kakashi, watched him leave while catching his breath. _Well, least I know I don't need to train him in physical strength, anyone seen my lung._

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KER-ZAP!

"INFERNAL DEVICE OF HADES!"

777

"Now that is a fine pile of shit, least its stored now." the human who was driving the flatbed said, forgetting the owners of said "pile of shit" were standing right next to him. He was reminded however, when he met the same fate as the last man, only he had a nice pile of splintery boxes to land in, the top of the pile then collapsed on top of him, further reminding him of the elites anger.

"Sir, maybe you should distance yourself from the apes. You could replace Jira at the training grounds." Zuka offered/suggested, he would not want to deal with the resulting situation if his superior actually caused lasting injury to one of the humans.

"Maybe that would be for the best, in the meantime, I must check on Qwaar, and see if his shields are up." Orda relented, hanging his head in a tired manner

"Is someone speaking of me?" Qwaar said, having just walked into the small office in the corner of the warehouse his voice currently being sounded over an intercom system, himself being visible through a wide window with his torso-plate and helmet missing. "I have to recover some tools from the- BY THE RINGS!!! WHAT HAVE THOSE MORONIC HUMANS DONE TO OUR SHIP!"

"I've already punished them for their actions, you see those fallen crates there," Orda said, perking up a little and pointing to the pile, "I knocked those down with a human who was particularly disrespectful."

Qwaar calmed down a bit, and opened the door leading out of the office to head towards the phantom and raid its repair kit. "By the way, Jira came back to the room earlier, apparently he's already done with his session."

"Convenient. I shall head to the sanctum and tell Jira to take my place in organizing the salvage." and with that, he left towards the hotel.

777

Jira waited idly, sitting in the recliner in the room, currently wondering how to turn on the television in the room. _I really wish to know why every human world I've seen has these in almost every room._ _Maybe I should have asked Qwaar when he was here. _Further thoughts on the matter would have to wait because there was a knock on the door.

"Identify yourself." Jira said in an authoritative tone.

"Orda 'Zaktee, your commander."

"SIR!" Jira yelled back in surprise, quickly moving over to, then fumbling with the door to let in his commander. The door opened, and Jira barely held his thoughts out of his voice. _He looks pathetic. What in the 7 rings did those humans do?_

"I've come back to rest, take my position at the storage facility."

"Yes commander." Jira obediently responded, before headed out the door, noticing Qwaar coming down the hall as well, tools in hand. He gave a brief nod as he passed by, which Qwaar returned.

777

Kakashi had just gotten a great idea to help the elites realize the importance of ninjutsu, he would get at least the commander to watch the ninja teams as they fought in the forest of death. He learned were the second exam would take place when he caught Anko eating dango on the side of the testing room while carrying moderate amounts of explosives. He only hoped she was sane when she set off said explosives, it wouldn't do to have anyone killed by the crazed proctor. He shook the thought from his mind, and checked the door with the note in his hand.

Room 117, this was it.

Kakashi gave a knock, and was greeted by a loud, "DAMMIT! WHAT DISTURBS MY REST!" and he thought of leaving while he still could, before the door slammed open to reveal a VERY pissed looking elite, luckily the elite he was looking for, or unluckily, depends how you look at it.

"Sorry, but I just thought you might wish to see ninja in action, as an orientation or something."

The elite groaned, pinching what would be the bridge of his nose if he had one. Kakashi then head a loud ZAP! Followed by an elites cursing.

"I suppose it would allow Qwaar to concentrate. May I assume there is an office somewhere?" Orda asked, beginning to look more tired then angry.

"No, well, not one that's accessible. I was actually expecting you to do your cloaking technique and following a team of your choice." Kakashi said, while looking expectant of the elites response.

"Very well, where is this arena or field or whatever means they take?"

"The forest of death, on the east side of the village."

Orda clicked his mandibles in mild surprise at the location's title, "I see. Qwaar, you remain here and continue maintenance, I'll leave and meet with Zuka."

Qwaar just gave a affirming wave, before resuming his work.

777

They met at the field in front of the forest with little incident, Orda was quickly able to find, and pick out team 7, and he and Zuka activated active camouflage without any problems. As they neared the team, they noticed chuunin starting to lead them towards a gate. Before they were out of earshot however, the purple haired woman yelled, "Just a word of advice to you all, don't die!" and the gates were opened.


	5. kyuubi

A/N: Yep, already another one, in fact, I already have 90 percent of this fic outlined, and only 8 percent written as of the end of this chapter. Assuming I stop were I plan to. I'm amazed nobody noticed I pulled an osoona and changed the elites last names in the first chapter, had to make them legit.

Dragon man 180: YES! OH HELL YES! I MANAGED TO KEEP YOU FROM GETTING IT! Im less predictable then I thought. Sorry for the outburst (dear god, an outburst in writing?) But I just bout shat myself when you didn't guess the main point of this chapter.

Miako: could you give me that url again, you have to put spaces in between each letter for it to show. I do need to read the manga, I got annoyed watching all the fillers in the archive site I found. I got to episode 176, and said fuck it, it had been fillers ever since I think ep 140. IT TAKES A LONG TIME FOR THESE TO LOAD! IF ITS FILLER I GET PISSED! And from what they said in that ep in the posters log, 26 more weeks of filler after that.

One more thing Miako, search option at top of page will find this a lot faster then 6 hours. Just search halo in summaries under Naruto. Bing!

And now the chap, one more time, im surprised Dragon man 180 didn't remember what might happen in the forest of death that would be of importance to the elites.

_Later note:_ I actually am dividing this part into two sections. But you'll get the idea. And next chapter wont take too long.

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The relative silence of the forest was almost immediately broken by a series of screams. The elites relished in this, hoping maybe they may encounter some dangerous beasts in the forest that they would be able to kill. They kept their eyes on team 7, noticing the blond bragging about something, then immediately running over to a tree and unzipping his pants, only to receive a punch over the skull by the female. She then pointed him over to some bushes to relieve himself apparently.

Orda nodded to Zuka that they needed to get closer, and the moved forward, keeping to the shadows to fully obscure themselves, and break up their outline. When they reached their destination, Naruto had already returned, and was bragging about how long he needed to pee, this obviously disgusted the elites, and although she couldn't see it, Orda gave an approving nod when Sakura yelled at him again. What they weren't expecting, was when Sasuke ran up, and bashed him into a tree, and the continued to engage him, they did note the expert hand-to-hand combat they used.

"Who are you, where is the real Naruto?" Sasuke demanded, before dragging on about inferior... "genjutsu?" what was that? The elites idly wondered, why if he was so sure this was a fake, why not simply kill him while he's down. The Naruto look alike then was obscured by smoke that materialized out of nowhere (once again, if they make that, why use smoke bombs.) And the elites were surprised to see a completely different person there, the ninja then engaged him combat, pushing him back into a clearing, the elites followed, and saw Naruto tied up and flailing like a fish. Zuka worked hard to suppress a laugh. The engagement was quickly settled, and the newcomer fled. (No real jutsu used in my version of the fight, because im lazy and don't want to load that episode again.)

The team then had set to developing a password of some sort, the elites had forgotten it, as it was psychotically long and inefficient. They were beginning to doubt the raven haired ones intelligence. (This is about were I did too)

a short while after this, yet another attack came in the form of a large blast, by the damage, the elites guessed a cannon of some sort, Sasuke and Sakura jumped out of the way, by Naruto wasn't to be seen. Wait there he was, and apparently Sasuke was drilling him on the password, which shockingly, he remembered, only to be attacked by Sasuke. The elites deduced, and were proven correct, that this was another illusion, when the person revealed him/her? Self to be another ninja. The elites though, at the moment, were more concerned that the couldn't tell the gender of this individual, then the fact it might be dangerous. The ninja then produced his (just for convenience im going to write his, we all know who it is anyway.) Scroll and said,

"By the end of this fight, one of us will have both scrolls" the individual then somehow swallowed the scroll.

"And one of us will be dead." he the pulled at his eyelid, and Sakura and Sasuke just froze, looking petrified, and they were seemingly unable to move, Sakura even slumped to her knees, as tears ran from he terrified eyes. _What in the name of the forerunners did he do!_

Further thoughts would have to wait, as it seeming the newcomer was pulling out knives and preparing to kill the two paralyzed genin. The elites, could not allow there new comrades to be killed by the enemy, so they lunged out from cover, unfortunately, just as they lunged out, he threw the knives at the genin, who then were whisked away with extreme speed by Sasuke. Even though they were out of danger for now, the elites sought to eliminate the threat.

They came out of active camouflage rifles blaring plasma, which the person barely had time to notice and dodge. He then turned to face the elites, to recoil in shock for a moment at the elites appearance. He then gathered his wits, and fixated the elites with a glare.

_Such killing intent, it almost visible how he plans to kill us, as if we wouldn't resist, I'm insulted by this arrogance._ Orda thought, his belief almost mirrored by Zuka, who was readying to roar and charge his opponent.

Orda then yelled, "Do you think you can make us afraid with a glare, surely you jest. Pathetic human prepare to die!" he then holstered his rifle, and pulled out his sword, swinging it to the side as he activated it, and he let out a huge roar as he charged his enemy.

The human then did a series of strange hand signs, before saying, "Summoning jutsu" and 4 snakes with heads the size of horses appeared around him.

This, did make Orda hesitate, and Zuka recoiled in shock. The serpents then hissed and lunged forward at the elites, the human took the time to run off somewhere, leaving the snakes to do his work.

The elite had to dive out of the way, or be crushed by the weight of several snakes charging forward. Zuka, having remained a little ways back, un-slung his particle cannon, and let off a shot, announcing his presence to the three snakes, the forth, having been eliminated by a well placed shot through the eye, and into the brain.

Orda tried to cleave off a snakes head with his sword, but was swiped aside into a tree, by a strike from the snakes tail. Orda was dazed by the hit, and saw it had drained his superior shield sysem completely, a monotonous beeping alerting him to the fact they needed to recharge, he couldn't start the sequence (I noticed they always hit one of the spike things on their left arm when the shield start recharging, so I guess its manual.) However because a snake with fangs bared was charging towards him. He twisted and lunged towards the snake, threading himself between the fangs, before driving his sword of superheated plasma, straight into the roof of the snakes mouth, and into its brain.

The other two snakes were headed right for Zuka however, and the snake before it died, had locked its fangs into the tree, pining Orda were he couldn't reach his gun and help Zuka. He had to do something, or Zuka didn't stand a chance. He struggled with his left hand, clasping for something, anything on his person that might delay, or kill the snakes, he found it in the form of a small, round object, with a button on one side. _A plasma grenade! What luck!_ He then removed his arm from the snakes mouth, activated and threw the grenade like a star pitcher.

Catching a snake in the thought section of its neck, the snake stopped for a moment, confused at the fizzing blue object that had adhered itself to his neck, before the device detonated, ending the snakes life, and spraying its blood all around the clearing, a good amount of it coating Orda, as the snake had been somewhat close to him already. (It was moving past him to get to Zuka.) He wiped the blood from his eyes to see the other snake swing around Zuka 's defense, to strike him with its blunt head, sending him flying past Orda, to slam his chest into a low hanging branch, with an audible crack, obviously not from the wood. He then slumped and fell to the ground unconscious.

The snake, then determined to get its meal, slithered quickly to get to him, only to have Orda free his right arm, and slash the snake from its chin, to halfway down its belly as it passed over him. The last snake dead, Orda began the gruesome work of cutting pieces of the snake away so he could free himself, this took the better part of half an hour and the he checked on Zuka.

He was in bad shape, he wasn't getting up anytime soon. Orda deactivated his, and Zuka's shield so he could give him temporary medical attention. He found that most of Zuka's ribs were broken, and he only could keep them protected by readjusting his chest plates. He holstered his sword, carefully placed Zuka upon his shoulder, and readied his plasma rifle. Just because the snakes were dead, didn't mean there might not be other dangers about. Unfortunately his active camouflage was destroyed by the repeated impacts experienced in the battle, and if he wanted to use it again, he was going to have to obtain a new armor system, not likely something he could obtain.

He then set out, in the general direction he thought team 7 might be, hoping to get directions to a medical facility.

He was only walking a short ways, before he found the battle grounds where the stranger had fought with Sasuke and Sakura. Several dead snakes were strewn about, some hanging from tree limbs, all with excessive numbers of knives and strange star shaped blades stuck in them. Orda saw a convenient fallen tree, one which had apparently fallen to natural causes, which comforted the battle weary elite. He decided, it might be safer to stay off the ground, so that any more threats would have very limited ways of accessing him. He walked up the artificial ramp, and into the canopy of branches above.

After a while of walking, he saw some people in the distance, only vaguely caring who they were, he moved as quickly as he could towards them. As he got close, he got ready to yell, before he noticed that it was Sasuke and Sakura with the stranger, apparently engaged in combat, he was about to try to shoot the stranger, before he stretched his body to a seemingly impossible extent, and scaled a tree to get to Sasuke's branch. Then several knives plunged into the wood in front of the snakelike man, and a yell was heard.

"Looks like I got here just in time!" Naruto's voice boomed across the battlefield.

He was situated on a branch, where he had a clear shot at the stranger incase he attacked again.

"Get out of here moron! You don't know what your up against, go now! While you still can."

While Orda wanted to remain unnoticed, and admired the blonds heroics, his stealth now would be moot if his assigned squad members died. He yelled, "He speaks the truth comrade! This foe is not to be underestimated!"

Naruto then looked from Sasuke, and surprisingly to Orda, as he had not expected him to be here. He then noticed the wound on Sasuke's leg, and the incapacitated Zuka slung across Orda's shoulders. He yelled, "It looks like you've been picking on my friends and I don't like that! So you best slither on back to your hole snake lady before I make a pair of shoe's out of ya!"

Orda once again was surprised by the blonds resolve, and decided to do his best to support him if he decided to attack.

"You can have it!"

The elite turned in shock to the source of the voice,

"The scroll, that's what you want right?" Sasuke continued.

"Sometimes the prey realizes that its life is in danger, and to live it must distract the predator with something even more precious."

_alright? What a strange individual. He's giving us lectures on predator prey relationships, I suppose its fitting but..._

"Take it." Sasuke said before tossing the scroll towards the individual. Only to have it snatched in an instant by a blur which then revealed itself to be Naruto.

"STOP BEING THE HERO NARUTO! JUST STAY OUT OF THIS AND LEAVE IT TO ME!"

Naruto only replied by punching Sasuke in the face, and sending him flying to the next branch. Orda then felt a small pulse in the air, he classified it as strange, but let it drop.

"I may not know the password, but I know who I am." Naruto said, catching his breath, apparently seething in anger. "You're the one I'm not so sure about, how do we know you the real Sasuke?"

"What are you talking about? Of course its him." Sakura stated from another branch.

"What kind of joke is this? Its me you loser!" Sasuke yelled.

"Liar. Liar! You may look just like him, you may sound like him, but there's no way you're the Sasuke I know. When did Sasuke become a coward!"

Orda, once again, was startled by the blonds actions, and enjoyed the fact he had high standards for bravery and honor.

"You choked that's what it is!" Naruto yelled.

The snakelike man chuckled, and said, "sad, but true." before laughing again. And wiping an abnormally long tongue about, before retracting said tongue and grinning. "if it was just the scroll I was after, I could just kill you and take it."

"Lets see you try it." Naruto yelled, before charging the ninja. Who had just made a series of familiar hand signs.

"No! Comrade! Look out, you don't know what that attack does!" Orda yelled, hoping to stop the blond, but it was too late

"Summoning jutsu." and then a HUGE snake, much larger then the ones before appeared, its arrival shattering the tree, and its head making a convenient platform for the ninja to stand on.

Orda was shocked at the scale of the thing, its very arrival had created a large gust of wind that almost knocked him from his perch, and did push Naruto back to another branch.

"Careful, he likes to play with his food."

the snake the wiped its tail and smashed the branch Naruto was on, sending him flying up into another branch far above them. Orda then realized he wouldn't able to help the boy, a sad loss, but not one he could grieve over, the others were still alive. He moved to get some distance so he could properly operate if he needed to help them. As he reached his destination, he felt another pulse, and another, both of them successively getting much stronger then the previous. A third one felt like his heart was being clenched, he could feel the energy radiating in the area. He turned and saw the blond. Orda could not believe he was the source of such energy.

He then had a feeling he was about to see something none had seen before, and started the recording unit in his helmet. Just as he did, Naruto spun in the air, let out a yell, and punched the snakes snout, sending a booming crash through the area with the strength of the punch. "By the rings. What is that." he muttered in shock. Removing the H.U.D. displays over his eyes, which were revealed to be reptilian and green.

The snake then flicked its tongue, and sent Naruto flying back, past Orda, to another tree, as he flew by however, Orda clearly saw his eyes and face. They weren't human, his eyes pupils had narrowed into elliptical slits, and his face had changed a little, to take on a more canine appearance, the edges of fangs poking out of his face making the appearance more noticeable. As he bounded off the tree, Orda got another look, and was assured he wasn't hallucinating, and he even noticed the boy had grown claws. When he noticed the crazed look in his eye's, and saw the bloodlust, he was almost assured of one thing. _If any of us get in his way, I'm sure he wont hesitate to kill us._ With that thought, he disregarded the others and started running again, not to support his comrades, that was a moot point now, he wouldn't have any effect on the outcome, he was assured of that. As he ran however he heard Sakura's panicked voice yell "Sasuke"

He turned around and saw the snake, lunging towards said genin, who was apparently paralyzed again. Just as he was about to get his however, Naruto, if he could still be called such, lunged into the snakes path and stopped it instantly with sheer strength. The elite gaped, an action mirrored by the other two genin, he decided he best use the deadlock to get away to sufficient cover, and he shut off his video unit.

777 (view switch)

Sakura idly made note of the elites retreat more concerned with the show of brute strength show by Naruto, who seemed to be getting ready to say something.

"Hey kid, you're not hurt are ya?" he said, before practically growling out "you scaredy cat!"

She looked on in shock at his eyes as he raised his head, and then remembered what he got that from, when they were in route to the village of waves with Tazuna, and they were attacked by those chuunin.

He was then grabbed by a excessively long tongue, a disgusting event which made Sakura cringe. He was then brought struggling to the enemy ninja's face, before he made some sort of seal, and hit Naruto in the stomach, causing him to gasp before passing out. He then threw him over his shoulder. _He'll never survive that fall!_ "Hold on!" she shouted, before pining him to a tree to stop his decent, while she was doing this, the ninja then identified himself as "Orochimaru." and lunged his head, just his head forward, and biting Sasuke on the neck. He then dispelled the snake said something about power, and poofed from existence. (Yeah, I got lazy and didn't want to write a largely irrelevant section.)

She then ran to Sasuke's aid as he had just passed out screaming in pain.

777 (timeskip)

Sakura was never going to forget one thing at least this day, that was Naruto and Sasuke were HEAVY! She had been carrying them about 20 minutes, trying to find a good hiding place. She finally spied a good place, a small area below the roots of a tree, she could set up traps and have a good view of the surrounding area. As she rounded the side however, she narrowly missed being mowed down by a wave of blue superheated bolts, she quickly recognized them and yelled, "WATCH WHAT YOU SHOOT WITH THOSE THINGS ORDA! YOU'RE GOING TO KILL SOMEONE!"

even though that was the general idea, Orda understood the message and said an apology before stepping out of the crevice. He was carrying rifles in both hands, one of them presumably Zuka's. He looked surprised to see Sasuke and Naruto on her shoulders, and he seemed very wary of the latter. He then spoke up and said, "I see you have wounded as well, I'll take watch, you take medical duty."

Sakura merely nodded, walked into the tree, took a surprised look at Zuka, not having noticed he was injured earlier, and set Naruto and Sasuke down next to him. Orda glanced at this, a positioned himself an the entrance, crouching, and bracing his rifles with his legs.

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and that's the end of that chapter, literally. Next chapter should come out soon, but with how long I expect that one will have to be, it might take a couple days. But hey, I'm out of school now so, I have plenty of time.


	6. judge, jury, and executioner

A/N: yep, chapter 6, and the rest of the kyuubi scenario... wow, not much to say this chapter

reviewer responses!

Dragon Man 180: the elites are used to the brutes doing it because that is perfectly natural. Orda was afraid, yes afraid, of Naruto because he was a human child. Even to elites that would represent some level of innocence (they don't think were evil, they just hate us for "insulting their gods") but when Naruto berserks, his body changes slightly, the elite noticed this, and felt the pure killing intent in his eyes. The fact that came from a human is what's so disconcerting. That and he doesn't even know if he can call him a human. The other reason this alarms him is the point in this chapter, so I wont spoil it. Though, the chapter name might give it away.

Monk: where have I seen you before? O well, there are several reasons I cant have the chief. One, the purpose of this fic, was to break the stereotypical walls I see on here, ie chief just murdering all bad guys and trash talking, or chief suddenly being very open. The chief, if you really want to write HIM, is a bitch to write, he is a strict order following, devoted soldier, strictly devoted to helping the UNSC and earth. He is very bad for crossovers, why should he have any reason to follow orders from anybody in any other universe? The only reason elites are good for crossovers is because they are so honor bound, they are devote to getting back to their world, they also would seek to redeem their honor from their betrayal by the brutes. But over all, it's a bitch to have halo crossovers when halo characters go to the other universe. If anyone else wants to try this, the only options I can think of are elites and normal marines, and they likely have to be oc.

Wow, those were long responses. I wonder if anyone actually will read those entire things before going to the fic.

Miako: thanks for the sites, in case I cant find the chapter I'm on which chapter was the end of the Sasuke retrieval mission?

and for the anime (and about 40 other animes) go to

g h . F f s h r I n e . O r g

if the episodes don't load correctly, its not your computers fault though, they change the format like every five minutes

its nice to have consistent reviewers, I wonder were the homeworld guy went though. HIGARRIAN COMRADE! PLEASE RETURN!

_Later note:_ holy crap, I just looked at the hits for this, 514, like three times as many as AOD, and while I still have fewer reviews, favs and alerts are higher. Thank you my loyal populace!

This will be the longer chapter, I need to accomplish a lot of stuff here.

77777777777777777777777777777777777777777

the elite once again was pleased with the humans he had been assigned to, he had been watching the girl for the better part of an hour, set multiple traps, some of them having multiple stages for incase the enemy dodged them. While she set up traps, Orda looked at Naruto, unsettled that he was in such close proximity to him, and also wondering what could have disabled him.

_could it have been that snake demon, or what did Sakura say his name was "Orochimaru?" yes, that was it, and what did he do to Sasuke, he seems much more stressed then Naruto. What could have possibly done this. More importantly, what of Naruto. I don't know what he even is anymore._ He the turned to face them pointing his rifles at Naruto. _If he is a danger to my elites, I should kill him here and now. He may have been a boy before, but he was a blood lusting abomination then._ Orda readied to fire, all other distractions tuned out, it would only take a second, and it would be painless. _It is unfortunate, but it has to be done._

"Hey Orda! I'm done setting the traps over here, I can take care of them again." Sakura said from the far side of the clearing.

Orda, startled out of his thoughts, safeties and harnesses his rifles. _I can deal with this another time. I will have to confront the hokage on this matter, he undoubtably knows what Naruto is, and he has my answers_. Orda then turned to face the entrance again, just as Sakura was returning. She sighed and replaced Sasuke's rag, least he was breathing properly again. Sakura seemed very tired, she was slowly nodding off, the elite saw fit to let her rest, so he made no move to wake her when she finally fell asleep.

He looked again to Zuka, worried about his condition, he had to get help soon, but for now he had to recover a little bit before they could move him, thus for now he was immobile. _This was the kind of damage these ninja could do? They are powerful indeed able to perform incredible acts of acrobatics, of summon beasts of war from nowhere, those serpents were the toughest opponents I've fought short of the flood. And the being himself apparently defeated both, "Naruto" and Sasuke, who seemed well trained as warriors, I'm curious as to how Sakura managed to escape._

Further thoughts were ended when Sakura began frantically mumbling in her sleep. Orda turned and saw her sweating and trembling. He reached over and shook her awake. She almost stabbed him in the face when she came to, his shields being the only thing stopping her strike. She quickly apologized, and retracted her arm. They then both heard a rustling of bushes. They slowly turned, hoping it wasn't an enemy, when they turned, they both saw it was merely a squirrel. Orda was about to shoot it for its trouble, but Sakura just scared it off with a knife. Orda then sat back down in his little alcove of roots.

777

Zaku and Dosu both looked curiously at the hiding spot of team 7, they had thought only the three would be there, but they could have sworn they just saw someone else move under there (Orda and Zukaare obscured by the tree.)

"Think she saw the explosive tag?" Zaku asked.

"No, but I think we should take a closer look." Dosu said getting to his feet.

777

Orda had glimpsed something in the trees, and was assured of the presence of hostiles when his motion tracker lit up like the human Christmas tree. He readied his plasma rifles, but did not warn Sakura, he thought it best if she reacted normally when the arrived, it would assist him in his counter ambush.

The enemies dropped straight out in the open, and Sakura was so startled she immediately turned to face them without telling Orda, which was perfect for him, as he pressed himself further into the roots, hoping to hit them when one or two were stuck in traps. However, the lead one, foiled that plot when he simply pulled the netting off of one of the pit traps. They then jumped over the rest, and blew away the log trap Sakura set up there. As soon as they landed however, Orda was on them like flies on carrion, scattering them with a wave of plasma. He didn't stop tracking and firing at them till his rifles over heated, and he threw his rifles into holsters, and activated his sword. "Sakura! Spring all the remaining traps!" he yelled.

She quickly nodded and complied, sending shuriken, kunai, and whatever was sharp and deadly, flying all over the clearing. But Zuka just send an airwave about that sent all the projectiles flying away, effectively ending their threat, unfortunately for him though, this did not account for Orda. Zaku was shocked at the appearance of the elite, now getting a better look, seeing him only 15 feet away looking very pissed and wielding a sword of plasma. He barely came to his senses and dived out of the way before the sword came crashing down where he was a moment ago.

The girl was more attentive at this time, and sent a wave of senbon at the elite, only to have them fly everywhere from the elites shields, the elite then spun to face her, and roared before charging, she muttered a curse before jumping into the trees and out of his reach. This left only Dosu as a target. He attempted to charge him, but he merely raised a device on his arm. Suddenly, the elite cringed, grabbed his head, let out a roar of pain and collapsed. (Note, they don't have external ears, but Choji has shown us that's not a issue.)

777 (Orda's mind)

"Let him be an example to all who would break our covenant!" Tartarus yelled, an affirming cheer following from the crowd. Orda himself was silent, already recognizing this as a dream, he didn't remember how he fell asleep, but for now he was bathing in his memories. _I was such a fool, like a sheep following a corrupt Shepard. I never defended the arbiter in his trial. It would have been heresy. How many elites had I helped condemn for frivolous crimes such as this. He tried to his fullest to save the ring, he didn't even know the truth about what it did._

The scene then changed to a later one, this one in his troop regiment, before he became a field master, this time he was wearing the red armor of a veteran. He shot every human he saw with his carbine, his body in auto pilot, his mind unable to stop himself. _And these humans, they made no real crimes, and did their best to defend themselves, and we killed them for it. What unthinking fools we were._

The next scene was him executing a squad of grunts, who had run from battle and allowed their leader to be killed. _They only wished to survive, and I was directly responsible for their deaths._

Another scene, this time of invasion forces retreating from the planet surface as the fleet was preparing bombardment. The dropship doors snapped shut just after he entered, even though other forces were being stranded on the surface. He only heard the grunts screams for help for a short moment however before the dropship lifted off the ground and headed towards its carrier. _This war has already far too many dead heroes. Far too many innocents that I have killed._ The elite, then felt great regret, this being the first time he's looked upon the past without being the brainwashed fool of the prophets. _Did I ever truly have honor?_

Further thoughts would have to wait, as he was being awoken by a sharp prodding at his side.

777 (real world)

Shikamaru continued prodding the, what he guessed to be a strange lizard. He sought to do so in case anything interesting happened, the first time he did it, a strange barrier popped up and stopped the stick. After about fifty times (he was really bored) the shield disappeared, and he was able to poke the skin.

All of the sudden the elite sprung up and sliced the stick in half with his energy sword. Shikamaru then jumped back, surprised, but not afraid. _Being afraid is troublesome._

Choji had just finished waking Naruto as well, who then yelled, "EVERYBODY GET DOWN!"

The elite hearing this, remembered how he became unconscious, and panicked, thinking hostiles were still in the area. He the sprayed plasma fire at every suspicious looking leaf, branch, and rock. Naruto then began supplementing his fire with shuriken. The entire cast of the rookie 9 who were present, chose that time to sweat drop, before the majority realized there was a unhuman thing shooting blue bolts of fire at everything that DIDN'T move. They were confused to the point they let the matter drop.

"Hey, Naruto! And...thing. The enemies aren't here anymore, stop making fools of yourselves."

The two beings, having gone back to back, then looked at Shikamaru, and mimicked each-others actions in innocent laughing. The elite then noticed who was at his back, and was about to jump away before he realized he was back to normal. Naruto then saw Sakura's short hair and panicked, immediately rushing over. _For now at least he's "himself"._ His thoughts then immediately turned to Zuka, who he was relieved to see just a short distance away, still safe. _He needs medical attention though_.

"Sakura, Sasuke, Naruto, do any of you have a map, I must head towards a medical station for Zuka."

Sasuke then nodded, and took a map from his person, and pointed the elite in the direction of the tower after some short calculation. He then walked off, unaware of a new set of eyes that had been following him leaving in another direction.

777 (timeskip)

he had been moving for a couple of days now. It was slow progress, he frequently had to stop for long periods to rest, let Zuka stabilize, and to eat and drink, before helping Zuka to. _At least even in unconsciousness he helps to eat and drink, otherwise he would be without hope._ Orda thought before finishing the fish he was eating, and departing from the river. He had not seen any other ninja since he departed from the battle-zone. In fact, he hadn't seen any more threats at all, which was lucky because he could fight well with Zuka on his back. All the quiet was allowing Orda to continue bathing his mind in memories, re-evaluating his actions, and finding most deplorable. He looked to his armor, and recalled his receiving it. _I killed five-hundred foes to obtain this armor. Where any of them less fit to live?_

Orda's further thoughts on the matter were put on hold when he noticed his hooves weren't hitting the grass anymore, and had started treading on paved asphalt. He had been on a road for a while but hadn't paid it any mind. He raised his head, and was glad to see that the tower was not only in sight, it was only a short distance away. He quickened his pace, and set towards the nearest door, it had a strange torn piece of paper on it, but he ignored that. And he pressed open the door. On the other side he saw team 7 and one of the instructors, _what was his name, ah no matter._ He decided to ignore the name for now, "is there a medical facility in this structure. My comrade needs assistance as quickly as possible."

Iruka shuddered a moment, now seeing what Kakashi was talking about earlier. (The alien comment at the meeting.) Iruka then just gave a simple point towards the medical area.

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Qwaar was very pleased at the moment, he had finally fixed the conduit on his shield systems, and he managed to get them online a moment afterwards. He was currently headed to check on Orda and Zuka, by way of following the convoy of ninja guarding the hokage as they entered the forest. Qwaar had over heard something earlier when he started following them. Apparently something was causing a lot of concern with the residential ninja.

Well, it didn't seem to concern him, so he just decided to let it drop, the tower was in sight now, he should be there in another fifteen minutes.

777

Jira was about to stab one of these incompetent humans. When they were organizing materials, they had overloaded a forklift, and let several crates fall and shatter. This wasn't what irritated Jira the most, it was what he found in those boxes. The humans had apparently found some weapons with very little damage in the ships armory, and had not informed him, instead they just immediately packed them in crates with completely unrelated parts and were going to shove them in the back of the warehouse. What did please Jira however was that in those crates, he found a functional carbine, and a large amount of ammunition for it. Needless to say, he claimed it for himself.

The humans did find a few working computers on the ship though, specifically navigation, and a functional F.O.F. tracker on one of the turrets. If they could ever fix the generator and stabilizers, this would make an effective gun-ship. Unfortunately, even though only the simplest components needed to be replaced, they still could not do so unless they had replacement parts, all of which that were on the ship were being used to repair the crushed pilots section, and the numerous hull breaches. Even a damned banshee would do if they had one to strip.

At the moment, Jira was using one of the strategy trainers that had been found in working condition. They had found two of the holographic devices, why they were on the ship was anyone's guess, but in the meantime, Jira found it satisfying to use it as a form of entertainment. He grimaced as a human frigate destroyed a wing of his seraphs with its point defenses, he remembered once again why he wasn't in the covenants space forces, as he did not enjoy the prospects of fleet command.

He idly noticed the time, and knew from talking with a few of the workers, that the second part of the chuunin exam would be over soon. He had recieved some money as compensation from the warehouse owner, for the damage done by his incompetent workers. (More out of fear of death by the elites, then a lawsuit) Maybe he would find that Naruto person, and eat at that restaurant again. He enjoyed talking with him, and the noodles once again needed to be reminded of their defeat.

777

Orda had just gotten Zuka to the medical ninja, and after a good few minutes of time wasted convincing them, he had managed to keep them from killing him for being a demon. Now he was getting ready to convince them he wasn't a demon, a prospect he wasn't looking forward to. He was spared the trouble when Kakashi happened to come into the room, with Sasuke moving along side him, the latter grasping the area between his shoulder and neck on the left side. _When was he wounded? I never saw any wounds on him when I left? Must have been later on._ He ignored the query, dismissing it as useless information. He then managed to get Kakashi's attention long enough to get a quick wave which served as enough proof that Orda and Zuka weren't demons.

Orda then handed Zuka over to the ninja, and decided to get some space, the close quarters and the sterile smell of the medical ward was irritating him.

As he left the room, he noticed fighting in the arena below. As he was headed to the railing on the side of the balcony, he felt a hand hit his shoulder, his shield still out from carrying Zuka.

"You might want to engage your camouflage, you're scaring the humans."

"Qwaar, it isn't usually wise to sneak up on your commanders like that." Orda said, slightly turning his head to see the blur of a hand. Qwaar apparently already in active camo.

"My apologies, but do notice the children staring at you to your left."

Orda then turned and saw a strange boy wearing sunglasses, another boy wearing a hooded sweatshirt with fur linings with a dog laying on his head, and an odd white eyed girl.

"I notice them yes, but I cannot engage my camouflage, the device was destroyed while I was in the forest with Zuka."

"Damn, where is Zuka anyway?"

"In the medical ward, he was injured in the same battle that my active camouflage was destroyed."

"I see." Qwaar said, now worried about whatever could have caused so much damage in battle. Orda then signaled he wanted to show him something, and they left for another room.

777 (view switch.)

"What a weird...thing." Kiba said.

"It seemed to be talking to itself." Shino continued, also seeing it as strange.

Hinata meanwhile had activated her byukagen, and saw two individual chakra signatures leaving. "Wait. There were two of them" she said in her freakishly light and skittish voice. (It freaks me out when she talks.)

"There were? But I didn't sense a thing, I couldn't even smell him." Kiba said, surprised anything could escape his nose. _But then again, I don't think I smelled the first one either._ (Their shields were already back up.)

Kiba then noticed the board on the wall announcing the next match. He decided to let the matter slide, as it didn't seem to be any of his business.

777 (back to the elites)

Qwaar had just finished viewing the combat footage Orda took in the forest. His face didn't show any surprise, a trait ironed in when he was training for the special operations core. In truth he was startled and greatly disturbed.

"Qwaar, I need your utmost vigilance in following my orders in the next few hours." Orda stated, after deducing that Qwaar was done viewing the footage.

"What will you have me do about this?" Qwaar asked. _If he held off that snake so easily as that, what can we do_.

"I believe the hokage knows what this boy truly is, but I also believe if he thinks we've become a threat to the boy, he will have us killed. On the other hand, if we let this slide, the boy may berserk again, and that time he may kill us." Qwaar nodded. He had a good idea what Orda's plan was.

"Shadow the boy until he stops to rest for awhile. After you have don't that, contact me, and wait in checkmate position until I give the order." Orda continued. They then left the room, and saw the devastated arena, not having known how it was destroyed as they were absorbed in their planning. Qwaar noticed Naruto walking out of the arena, and nodded to Orda before running after him, engaging his camouflage again. Orda then left for the hokage tower.

777 (timeskip)

Orda proceeded into the tower, and alerted the secretary that he needed to meet with the hokage. She told him to take a seat until he wasn't in any meetings. About twenty minutes later, he recieved a message from Qwaar stating that he was in position behind Naruto at a ramen stand. Conveniently, at that time the secretary also said the hokage was ready for him. Orda walked down the hall again, this time without guards, and into the hokage's office.

"Welcome Orda, is there something you need?"

"Yes, I need to know about Naruto."

The hokage hesitated a moment before answering, "What do you need to know?"

"I need to know what he is."

The hokage, knew for the most part what this elite was talking about. He wondered who had told the elite, "He is a loyal ninja to Konoha."

"Do not toy with me as if I am incompetent."

"What is it you're going to do if you find out." The hokage (man that gets annoying to write.), asked.

"Know that the lives of my elites matter to me, but that of the boy's does not. If I deem him a danger to my elites, I will have him killed. Rest assured, if that is my decision, it will be quick and painless." as he was saying this, he kept his coms receiver on full, so that Qwaar could hear the whole conversation. At the time, Qwaar was readying his blade behind Naruto's neck, so that when it was activated, it would immediately kill him.

"If you harm him you will never leave this place alive." the hokage practically growled out.

"Do not jest, you warriors are skilled yes, but we are more then capable of killing you." Orda shot back. "For now though, I only ask you tell me of what he is. Afterward, if I believe you, I will deem wether he is a threat."

The hokage was silent for a moment, contemplating his choices, before finally relenting. "To tell you what he is, I have to tell you of some of Konoha's history. Years ago, our village came under attack by a demon, known as kyuubi, the nine tailed fox. It was incredibly powerful, and was capable of destroying entire mountains. Our fourth hokage fought with it, but was unable to defeat it. He saved our village, by sealing the monster into a newborn child. That child was Naruto." the hokage finished, Orda patiently listening.

"Qwaar, the target has been deemed-"

"Don't hurt him!"

"Neutral." Orda finished, before switching off his com. Meanwhile, Qwaar had re-holstered his plasma sword and was leaving Naruto.

"Why didn't you give the order?"

"If I had, I'd never be able to redeem my honor. I believe what you have told me, it is not a lie a human would make. Therefor, this human is the equivalent of a zealot. He should be considered a hero to your people. And our war already, has too many dead heros." Orda said as he was turned to leave.

After he was gone, the hokage flopped down in his seat, unable to remember when he had stood up. And then let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. _These creatures were able to believe what our own villagers could not. Amazing._

Later, Jira did meet up with Naruto at that same ramen stand, just barely missing Qwaar. He sat down, unaware of the danger that his new friend had been in, likely never too know.

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and that is probably my only update for awhile, the next chapter is going to take awhile.

In the meantime hope you enjoyed it.

R&R people!


	7. Your ass, my size 24 hoof

A/N: this is going to pick up right were the last chapter left off. And you can probably easily guess what happens here by the chapter title, kinda gives it away (the last one was a bit subliminal, this ones kinda blatant.)

I skip some parts of the anime (and manga) because the elites wouldn't really affect much. They're advanced yes, numerous no, fast no, strong... only somewhat. Besides, the divergence is a long way off that much I can tell you. (Though I may cut a couple of parts because of relevance. Sorry all)

Reviews:

manga guy who I cant remember the name of (sorry): I was just a little late telling you about ffshrine, they apparently removed their anime section, I now use youtube, but that isn't very consistent if you want full episodes, most are amv. Its good for marathon watching though.

Jesse Edwards: thank you, but just a small bit of info, its not entirely to safe to post your name on the internet if that is your real name. Get an alias. I usually use Lance Corporal for example. But thank you for the review

Dawn: and Naruto is annoying as hell, and has the sexual knowledge of an eggplant. I'm not going to lessen major personality traits just because their mildly annoying, (it is a bitch to get the elites to have that kind of snobbishness too) its how they are, and in the end, it makes things less predictable. Deal with it for now, as all things go, it becomes less of a problem later. As I plan on fixing this personality trait with reason as opposed to spontaneous niceness (ala too many inuyasha halo crossovers)

Dragon man 180: nice to see you review again, but I'm afraid logic interferes with a elite vs gaara. The gaara fight mostly takes place a longs ways off, and the elites simply could not bs their way into keeping up with ninja. I know it's a bitch, I wanted to do it too. But another thing about this fic I'm trying to prove is the survival of logic. remember my first authors note.

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Jira got his order of pork ramen without any incident this time, and it was relatively cheap by his guess. He ate his ramen more savoringly this time, though he still had to latch onto it like a squid. He then raised his head after a particularly large gulp, and looked over to Naruto, who was currently eating like a mad man.

"Naruto, last time we met like this, you asked me of my story, my motivations. I'm curious of hearing yours as well." Jira stated.

"Well, all my life I've been disrespected and ignored by most of the villagers here. But I'm going to change all that." he said, before spinning around in his seat and standing on it. "I'm going to be the greatest hokage! Then everybody will treat me like I'm somebody! Hokage! Hokage!" he yelled, thrusting his chopsticks into the air like a sword.

Jira stared for a moment, before a sweatdrop appeared by his head (Zuka would be terrified of said sweatdrop). _At least he's enthusiastic about his cause... a little too enthusiastic._ They then finished their meals without any further outbursts, and Jira paid for his own and Naruto's meals.

Naruto then left, saying he had to find Kakashi. Jira then headed back to the warehouse.

777 (timeskip, cause what would the elites do in that time period)

Jira once again was pleased by the human workers. They hadn't broken anything since their last mistake, and in fact were doing a good job on assisting repairs to the phantom. The frontal section was now properly functional even. Most of the displays were dim due to the low generator output, but they were readable. They had even managed to set up their armor systems to show up on the navigational computers map.

The ship was currently elevated on a scaffold, the newly repaired turret gleaming on the ships nose, they even managed to get it to track one of the illusionary clones of a nearby ninja. Though Jira was slightly worried their equipment could be fooled by the ninja's illusions, the performance of the cannon pushed those thoughts aside. _But how useful is this ship if it cant even move?_

Jira thought of taking a rest period and finding Naruto again, but every time he saw him he was with a strange old white haired man who kept staring at him as if he were a demon (gee wonder why). _On the bright side, he seems to be among the few who respect the boy. What causes the other humans here to be such insolent rats I may never know._

Jira looked at the humans who were putting another repaired component into the ship backwards again and groaned, throwing his head back in annoyance. _How does Qwaar relieve his stress with these humans!_

777 (meanwhile)

Qwaar was wandering randomly though the streets, to search for Orda. _Damn, I hate superiors, they can never be found when they're needed. How is it that chattering minor (blue elites for lame men) can keep himself sane in this damn city. If I cant find Orda soon I'm going to kill one of these insolent morons. Did that one dare glare at me!_

777 (meanwhile) (again)

Orda was rather entertained at the fights so far, the Uzumaki boy had proven his unknown promotion to zealot. He had fought valiantly against the arrogant Hyuuga, and come out victorious. The fight they were currently watching for was Sasuke against Gaara. The fight had been strange so far, as waves of sand seemed to be controlled by the red haired boy, and he had seemed utterly invincible until the Uchiha had hit him with a stabbing motion from his hand. Things had then been silent since then, it had been about a minute, and the Uchiha was apparently stuck. _Humoring._

The Uchiha chose that time to pull his hand free and lunge away. His retreat was followed by a large mutated hand charging out from the cocoon of sand. _By the rings, what is that?_ Orda's further thoughts were interrupted when he saw several feathers obstructing his vision. "And what foolishness is..." he fell asleep before he could finish.

777 (Qwaar pov)

He had been wandering the village for hours and he still hadn't found Orda or Zuka. He was just about to give up on them, he had come upon the wall to the village. _Wait, of course, I could just go to the hanger (the warehouse) and check the ship. _He had just turned around when a huge blast sent him flying away from the wall. _What in the forerunners_? He then turned over on his back and looked at the wall, or what was left of it. It had been blown apart, and a huge snake was in the middle of the gap. Just as he was standing up several ninja flew in the gap, one stopping in front of him, the ninja had a look of shock before he threw three kunai at Qwaar.

Qwaar 's, shields came up just in time to block all three, and he quickly pulled up his rifles and fired them at the ninja. The ninja was to slow to react, and fell screaming as five bolts slammed into his torso, leaving huge burning wounds, his scream was cut off when a final one hit his head.

Qwaar then wasted no time in opening up his com line and yelling, "ELITES! The village is under assault! Prepare yourselves for combat!"

The coms then crackled back a response, "This is Jira, I hear you Qwaar, we heard the explosion, the workers here are panicking, I will attempt to fortify the warehouse, try to make your way back here. Have you heard from the commander at all? I cant reach him or Zuka."

Qwaar checked their frequencies and only got static, "sorry, they seem to be having some sort of trouble."

"Damn. We will have to hold out on our own, make your way back here."

Qwaar idly thought about drilling him on rank, but decided now wasn't the time. He discreetly made his way away from the giant serpent which was currently more interested in other targets.

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Jira then flipped through the com lines to find the human frequency, hoping to get some idea as to what was going on. Unfortunately, when he found the line, all the information was drowned out by screams for medics and reinforcements. Shortly after this a loud thud sounded at the door.

"That cant be Qwaar already." he said "Humans! Steel your nerves, our foe is upon us!"

He then leveled his carbine at the door and waited a moment. He then noticed one of the humans shivering next to him.

"I'm not a ninja! I'm just a janitor for the warehouse!" he cried out.

Jira stared at him a moment, before unclasping his plasma rifle and shoving the stock into the humans hands. "Point it at an enemy, and pull the trigger." the elite calmly explained.

The janitor gave him a panicked stare that clearly said 'you've got to be joking'. But the elite ignored it. A large boom sounded at the steel door in the warehouse, and a large dent was present. Jira then thought of something. "All of you, get behind the scaffolding to the ship! I have a plan."

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The sound ninja looked at the warehouse door with contempt, one explosive tag should have been enough, but it had been sloppily placed and now they had wasted two bringing the door down. The third had been set properly, and was ready to be detonated. The timed fuse lit, and the door blew away with the impact. But as soon as the dust settled, several large pinkish purple bolts of energy flew out of the hanger, one of which struck the man next to him, and blew away a good portion of his torso. The man then slumped to the ground, very obviously dead.

The rest of the sound nin took cover at that point, the leader the only one still standing where he was, the smoke then started to blow away, and a wisp of visibility crossed his vision long enough to see a blue armored demon, with a strange devise, moments before a radioactive round punched through his skull with incredible accuracy.

The rest of the sound nin then charged in to attack.

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Orda woke to find a mass of pink in this face. He at first thought he was delirious, but then realized it was Sakura. He then remembered the strange circumstances of his rest. And he glanced about still on the ground. What he saw made him promptly jump up un-sling his sword and activate it. "What is happening here!" he asked urgently.

"Konoha is under attack by the hidden sound, and the sand." she quickly answered.

"The ones with purple headbands and desert garb respectively." Zuka responded from behind Orda. Zuka then leveled his rifle and fired, hitting a sound ninja from across the stadium.

"What happened to us?" Orda then asked.

"Genjutsu." Kakashi replied, calmly walking over "Sakura, go wake the others, we need them to pursue Sasuke and the sand genin."

Sakura quickly nodded, and went to complete her task.

Kakashi then turned to Orda who immediately said "We do not take orders from humans, we will contribute what assistance we can, but I will not endanger my elites to your 'unfamiliar' command." Kakashi merely closed his mouth, catching the elites meaning, and deciding there wasn't much point in arguing (as what are they going to do, spontaneously sprout another finger and do jutsu, nope)

Zuka took notice at that point of the roof of the main section of the stadium, where many combatants seemed to be gathering, he took another moment to register that the hokage was up there. "Leader, the village leader seems to be in heavy combat on that rooftop, cover me while I give him sniper support." Zuka then ran over to the corner of the railing on the bleachers, and thoroughly braced himself to fire his rifle with deadly accuracy.

He quickly got a bead on the one who seemed to be the main threat to the hokage, and was about to fire a shot into his skull when a shield suddenly sprung up and blocked his shot. "Damn, and what trickery is this!" he asked, annoyed that he hadn't gotten a shot off. He then pondered where this shield could have possibly come from, a question quickly answered when he looks at the vertices (corners). _Humans are capable of generating energy shields? Incredible, but now is not the time for awe, I need to find a weak point._

He was interrupted however, by a half dozen shuriken slashing at his front side, all but one blocked by the shield, the last, buried itself into his chest. It didn't do any real damage, but it was troubling none the less. He stumbled back into a bench, before lunging back forward to engage the ninja who had just jumped onto his perch. The ninja was stunned when he saw what he was fighting, and gave Zuka the chance to sling out a plasma grenade, which he then activated, and forcefully shoved into the ninja's stomach, knocking him off the rail. Halfway down the grenade detonated, killing the ninja, and showering the grass below with viscera.

The elite then looked back over the edge and yelled, "You were a fool to challenge me!" (Anyone else noticing the game lines I throw in occasionally.) He then climbed back onto his perch, and took his first shot at one of the hostile combatants in the barrier. Unfortunately, the barrier canceled out the majority of the shot, and it only served to maim one of the odd individuals, who's wound healed anyway (one of the Hokages that orochimaru summoned). One of the other hostiles then threw a glare in his direction. _Well by the rings, it's the same man from the forest, seems to have changed his appearance. No matter, his life is already forfeit._ He then aimed at one of the humans keeping the shield up. He quickly took his shot, and hit where he believed the humans heart was. The human merely cringed a bit, yelled something to his comrades, and the barrier grew darker. _Oh yes, I keep forgetting that these humans hearts are on the left side of their bodies. But the shield seems stronger now, I will have to wait until it dies down a little._

He settled for taking a pot shot at a group of sound ninja who were harassing a jounin. They fell into confusion when their leaders head exploded and were quickly eliminated by the jounin. They quickly waved their thanks in his general direction, having seen the bolt, then he moved on. The elite followed him a moment more before he felt something spray on his back.

He spun around and saw a sand ninja impaled on a plasma sword.

"You should pay more attention to your motion tracker, next time I might not notice the enemy behind you." Orda said, before kicking the corpse off his sword.

Zuka merely nodded, and returned to his sharp shooting. _Wait a moment._ "Commander! What about Jira and Qwaar, they may still be unaware of the attack."

Orda then stood rigid, having completely forgotten about the others. "Cover me while I contact them!" he yelled. Zuka then ran up behind him, and pulled out his plasma rifle, then shot at the nearest targets.

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Naruto woke up at this point and noticed Sakura leaning over him, he had a momentary fantasy before noticing they were fully clothed, and still in the stadium. He was about to ask her what was going on, before she shoved him down and a kunai flew over his head. He spun his head to look at the source, just in time to see a sound ninja get hit in the side of the head with a strange blue glowing fizzing ball, which adhered itself to his head.

The ninja frantically tried to pry it from his head a moment, before it detonated, disintegrating him from the waist up. He turned once again to see that this weapon (that he was really starting to like) had come from the red elite who he had forgotten the name of.

"Sakura what's going on?" he asked, not being interrupted this time.

"Konoha is under attack by the hidden sound and the sand." she quickly replied before noticing another ninja behind her.

She gasped before Gai came up, and rammed the ninja from behind, forcing him into a wall with enough strength to plow a hole. Gai was about to say something, even getting into a fancy pose to do so, before he was cut off by a yell from Orda.

"Success! I've raised them, Qwaar is apparently moving West through the city, fighting his way to the warehouse. Jira is currently holding the warehouse against a large wave of hostiles, he says **they** need reinforcements. He apparently has some armed workers with him."

Naruto, hearing his newfound (though strange) friend was in danger, wanted to help, but was cut off by Kakashi.

"Sakura, wake Shikamaru. Then I want the three of you to go after Sasuke and Gaara." He then summoned a Ninja dog to assist them. Naruto stood up, ready to accept and start the sudden mission.

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"More to the left, coming in from the office entrance!" One of the workers yelled.

Jira quickly turned, and fire three rounds at the two sound ninja, the first two, striking one in the chest, punching through his clothing easily. The last one struck the other ninja in the throat, he then fell gurgling before the elite put him out of his misery with a fourth shot. He had gotten the message from Orda, and was relieved that they apparently were alright. _But they are in a worse state then we are, they didn't even have time to fortify themselves._

While he was distracted, another ninja had dropped from above behind him, only to be cut down by a somewhat poorly aimed burst of plasma fire. The elite turned, and noticed the human he had given the rifle to earlier, he gave him the best impersonation of a grin he could, and returned to firing with his carbine at the enemies.

They had quickly been pushed back when the enemy charged in through the door, they were too quick for the slow firing plasma canon to do any real damage, and most of the workers had no ninja training whatsoever, the ones who couldn't fight, and weren't killed in the start of the skirmish, were currently hiding inside the troop compartment of the phantom.

The unlucky ones were currently splayed across the ground in front of him, faces frozen in horror. _Cowards, attacking noncombatants when more challenging foes are clearly present._ He then heard a familiar sounds of another ninja dropping down behind him. _Stupid fellow._ He didn't even turn around, he merely grabbed his sword, and activated it while swinging it behind him, bisecting the ninja who had just landed. _That should keep them from trying **that** again._ _But we cant take this assault much longer._ The konoha ninja next to him fell with a yell as several kunai planted themselves in his chest. _Qwaar where the hell are you._

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Qwaar held his rifles out to both sides and fired them simultaneously, turning his head to either side to aim and track new targets. He was currently moving down a street, with several ninja he had gathered from hopeless fights along his route. He had gathered a total of seven, and they had remained relatively intact in spite of their slow speed (more like HIS slow speed, but you get the idea).

He then heard a large rumbling and a rush of wind headed his way. "Take cover!" he yelled, before diving to the ground himself.

Just after this, a huge serpentine tail smashed through the tops of the buildings, catching one unlucky Konoha ninja before he could hide. Several large pieces of rubble fell towards Qwaar, who had to roll out of the way. "This is too much, even for an elite!" he yelled standing up to see one of the snake's heads headed his way. "I will spill your guts like a sniveling grunt." he growled out while putting away his rifles and arming his sword. He never got the chance to fight the snake however as a large cloud of smoke obstructed his vision.

When the smoke cleared, he had to take several steps back to steady himself. _That is the largest toad I have ever seen._ Said toad had kindly crushed the offending snake head. And currently had a creepy looking white haired man dancing on top of it. _For the sake of my sanity, I'm going to just pretend I don't see that._ "Humans! Lets move." he swung his hand before charging towards the now visible warehouse.

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Orda slashed another trio of sound ninja who had surrounded him. He and the other allied combatants had managed to clear out the majority of the stadium, and he now had a moment to glance at the Hokage's position. _You must be joking. _The whole place was crammed full of large stone walls that hadn't been there before, and huge trees. _Some godly presence somewhere must find our confused antics hilarious to repeatedly shock us like this._

"That's the last of them." Kakashi said from next to him.

"At last, I thought they were endless." Zuka stated, setting down his overworked sniper rifle. He had fired it so commonly for so long its cooling mechanism was wearing out.

"Now we just have to wait for the signal." Kakashi stated.

Orda 'hummed' curiously, Zuka just turned his head and waited for the jounin to continue.

"And there it is, time for our counter attack." He calmly continued, before rising from his crouched position on the rail.

Zuka and Orda looked at each other, a "grin" coming across both their mandibles.

They were going to enjoy this.

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A/N: I'm a bastard aren't I. Making you wait forever, then leaving this chapter here. I have my reasons, so... yeah... um... moving on. I've wasted a summer on writers block and playing soldat (best free internet game of all time, look up its wikipedia entry). School is finally starting for me, junior year and a hell of a lot of classes, tough ones too. I likely wont make those double updates I used to make during the school year. That means, updates are far in-between, and you get a third less writing on average. Next summer I plan on finally getting a damned job too. So, this may be the end of rapid updates.

BUT FEAR NOT. I will still update, and I am reworking the story in a way which will make the elites (and our other friends) presence relevant very soon. So stay present, I notice more and more of you are reading this, so by hell I'm not going to (purposely) let you down.


	8. What was gained, and lost

A/N: well quick reviews, I as of yet don't have MUCH homework, but it is present, so um yeah.

This chapter takes a much more solemn mood then the rest. It is set in the aftermath and rebuilding from the chuunin exam battle. The counter attack has already occured, and the elites are at the funeral procession that occurred afterwards.

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The progression moved forward, a sodden mood matched the raining cloudy skies. Orda noted that the counter attack could not have gone better, as enemy forces had been pushed out of the city immediately and with overwhelming force. Along the way, they had also reinforced the hanger, and saved the rest of the survivors there, Jira and his subordinate had also not suffered any serious injury before they arrived (the human was actually disappointed in having to part with his new metallic friend).

This was where feelings of joy ended however, when Qwaar arrived, he and his companions discovered that the whole industrial district had taken a heavy hit, Konoha would rely completely on mission funds for awhile. Casualties had been high throughout the village, most of the people who hadn't been evacuated in time, or who hadn't been in the major offensive of the counter attack, had been overwhelmed and slaughtered. The dead littered the streets, it was a sad sight to see after an apparent "victory".

The greatest loss however, was the village's greatest man, their Hokage. His name and picture were prominently displayed, among many ANBU and jounin who were also lost in the attack. He had apparently died fighting the one known as Orochimaru. Many villagers were very angered and grieved over the Hokage's death, and many more had lost family.

In a side note, Orda and his squad were actually very surprised that the humans had no objections to their presence at this funeral. In fact, from some word of mouth, the council had even decided to finalize their staying conditions. But in the meantime, this was overshadowed by the sodden mood in the area.

The memorial was carried out, and the people soothed each others cries. The elites look on in surprise at the humans resolve, so many of their heroes and warriors had died, and yet they seemed, apart from sadness, ready to carry on. _I guess that is another trait of humans that the prophets preferred to hide._

The people then began to disperse, and the elites did the same.The clouds overhead seemed to mimic these actions, and also began to disperse.

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The repairs on the village began the next day, and progressed smoothly though slowly. Missions were started up again almost immediately, as the village need the monetary resources badly. Most ninja teams were always out.

Orda was currently headed towards a blacksmith he had commissioned something from a few days previously. The smith had told him it would take a few days to get the engravings on the armor he had requested, but he would work as quickly as possible. Orda had paid him a large sum, out of their quickly depleting funds from the apology the warehouse owner had given them. They would soon accompany a ninja team on a mission in order to gain funds to start paying their housing debts, and to live off of for the duration of their stay.

When he reached his destination, the smith told him that the piece needed some finishing touches, but would be ready for him at the end of the day, but the smith had an inquiry about the size of the piece, saying the measurements seemed to small for him. The elite offered an explanation, which the smith accepted, and they both went to their respective tasks.

Qwaar was currently minding the warehouse, while Jira and Zuka helped the villagers in the repairs of the town. This left Orda free to do as he wished, which currently involved finding a small hyperactive human. This was proving far harder then he would have originally thought.

He walked on for a little longer until he saw another one of the team, the raven haired boy named Sasuke. Orda gave a nod to him as they passed on the sidewalk, in doing so, with his much superior height, he looked down his collar and noticed an odd mark on his neck that resembled some sort of bruise. _Well this is an odd thing, it doesn't look like one of those human symbolic markings._ Orda thought little else of it, deciding it bore no importance. He continued on his way before deciding he was hungry and turned into a restaurant on the street.

The interior seemed understaffed, and had some debris that hadn't been disposed of cleared into a corner, but it seemed largely operable. He noticed Sakura also here, apparently having come in just before himself. _Well that's convenient._

"Sakura." he said to get her attention. She spun around as if startled, which she likely was, she seemed distracted when he came in.

"Oh, its you, how are you, um..."

"Orda" he completed for her, "and I am in good health."

She grinned a bit, and glanced to the side, something was obviously troubling her. Though that was normal for a person having had their greatest leader taken away days before. Orda decided to bring up another subject, "I may be familiar with your language, but unfortunately, I am rather at a loss to the choices of food. might we share a table and order? I will pay."

"Oh sure." she seemed to perk up upon having another topic to think about.

They both sat at a table, Orda doing so rather uncomfortably do to the format of his legs and spinal column. After getting their orders, they remained silent for a moment.

Orda, deciding to break the silence, thought of possible topics a human might want to discuss. Not finding any very obvious, he brought up something recent, "I noticed Sasuke before I entered, did you notice him."

Sakura froze for a split second, but then responded, "yeah, I was talking with him for awhile." she seemed somewhat distracted again.

"I noticed an odd mark on his neck as he left. Do you know what that is?" Orda asked.

Sakura froze again, this time staying that way for a minute. Orda took notice, and worry about this. _So, this is what has her distracted, something about Sasuke and that mark. It seemed like only a bruise though, why does it have her so troubled like this? She doesn't look willing to talk about it._

"Don't worry yourself over it, it doesn't seem like something to provide a large worry." he relented. _I can inquire someone else about this at another time_.

She looked relieved and their food was arriving. She started eating, before being fully jolted awake and having her thoughts torn from Sasuke, when she noted the disgusting matter in which the elite was eating. "**_He eats like an animal_**." she thought. She only managed to get through half her plate before losing her appetite. Orda noticed this, and he decided this was the last time he would take Jira's advice on eating ethics.

He payed the bill, and inquired Sakura where he might find Naruto. She gave the location of his apartment, and they parted company.

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Naruto was currently happily eating ramen out of a cup. He finished his current one, and gulped down the last of his milk, and he prepared to go out for the day. As he was getting ready he heard a large rapping on his door.

He opened it to see a large scale covered belly, before looking up to see a face that most people would cringe at. Naruto only replied with a, "Oh! Hey Orda, what are you doing here?"

"I have come to bring you to see something." he simply replied.

"Oh! Cool! Is it one of the shiny balls of death?" he childishly asked.

"No"

"One of the glowing swords of death?"

"No"

"One of the shiny... somethings of death."

"NO!" came a somewhat irritated reply. _I'm about to give this boy a gift such as this?_ "Just come and see, I have commissioned something from the local smith."

"Oh! Alright." he complied.

It was a short trip to the smith, but by the time they arrived he had finished the work. He quickly presented it to the two, now understanding who the elite had gotten it for, (given the implications, he was also very disconcerted) Naruto got as close to it as physically possible, and looked eagerly. It was a roughly pentagonal shaped shoulder pad, that strapped with a hard leather harness across the body. It took up Half of Naruto's upper arm, and was quite sturdy. It proudly displayed a strange circular symbol with several sweeping designs on it.

"Wow... what is it."

Orda almost dead-panned upon hearing this, but he regained his calm. "It is a symbol of an elite warrior, a Zealot. It is a great honor to have an item such as that."

Naruto blinked a couple of times on hearing this, and then realized the importance of it. "Why are you giving something like this to me?" he asked.

The smith had retreated into a back room to monitor something, and Orda leaned over. "I have discovered what was kept secret about you, and I am honored by your heroism." Orda gave a small bow.

Naruto meanwhile was shocked. _He knows! More then that he thinks I'm a hero! What the hell? Who told him?_ "H-how did you find out?" he shakily asked.

"Well, I first saw it in the forest. At that time, I didn't know what it was, and was fearful." he said, "but then I inquired the late Hokage about it, and learned of your situation. You save this village each day you exist. Your very legacy is of holding back a great evil. If that does not make a hero and a Zealot, I don't even wish to know what does."

He noticed Naruto now looking at the ground, completely silent. Orda looked back and forth, awkwardly waiting for a response. He was about to give up on one when Naruto spoke up. "Thank you Orda." he barely spoke up, his voice weak. _He accepts me. Of all the people in the village besides Iruka, the old man, and Kakashi, he accepts me even knowing what's in my gut?_ He looked once again at the shoulder pad. _I am so wearing that._

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The next day, Team seven and the elites were called to the Hokage's tower. They apparently were being assigned a mission by the council.

The elites and humans had arrived quickly upon being informed, and currently four fully armed and armored eight foot tall elites (huge I know, but that's what the scale chart says) stood ready behind several shorter of stature humans.

The council stared at the spectacle a moment, most of them not having seen the elites but only heard of them. The others just now realizing how damned tall they were. The council members also noticed the pad proudly displayed on Naruto's shoulder, in sickening contrast to the bright orange jumpsuit. One of the council members gaged before regaining his composure.

The Hyuuga clan representative stood up at this point to give the briefing.

"As you are aware, we are short of people in these times, and we would rather not assign this mission to a squad of your inexperience, but we don't have a choice. We recieved this request the day before the Chuunin exam incident." he said, "It seems that a mining town has recently lost contact with its miners, they sent their own guards but they didn't return. The mine is a hotspot for precious stones, and they believe that raiders are taking the cave, they have asked for our assistance in driving them out."

"Is that all?" Orda asked.

The Hyuuga stared at the elite for a moment, before continuing, "this is a B rank mission, it is not to be taken lightly, the villages guards were not incompetent, as they had dealt with past raids. The villagers believe that ninja may be among the raiders. You may decline this mission, though we would ask otherwise."

The genin nodded to Kakashi, and Orda clicked his mandibles. "We accept the mission."

"Good, depart as soon as you are ready."

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A short while later they stood just beyond the village gates, which still couldn't close, headed to the village.

As they walked, Orda examined the map they had been given on the cave. "This is strange." he stated.

"How do you mean?" Kakashi asked.

"Well, we can assume that raiders couldn't move in a large group for fear of being spotted." he said, "but the mission report implied that they had entrenched themselves in the cave. The cave is filled with capillaries and would be difficult to defend. at the same time, most of the exits are rather steep, so rapid escape would be next to impossible, especial carrying heavy loads of stones."

"So what are you implying." Kakashi returned, the genin also expectant of a response.

"I am unsure, I do not know enough of this world to think of a possible explanation for this activity. What I am sure of, is that I don't trust this information." he finished, pocketing the map.

"Perhaps I should have packed more ammunition from the supplies." Jira stated, looking at his carbine.

"I'm sure that eight magazines will be more then enough, the humans here seem unfamiliar with firearms." Orda responded.

"And besides, do you doubt my vigilance." Zuka added.

"Guess you are right." Jira said.

"So what does this thing do that's so special?" Naruto asked.

"Ah, I am glad you asked. While the plasma rifle may be good for longer fights, do to its lack of ammunition." he replied. (1) "It is woefully inaccurate at longer ranges. This carbine is quite effective at longer ranges."

"So what happens when someone gets in your face?" Naruto half asked, half taunted.

"Then they taste the heat from my blade." Jira said, chuckling.

Naruto grinned his fox grin and joined in the chuckle, mental images of the incident satisfying his curiosity.

Sakura looked at Naruto and Jira, and found it odd that they got along so well. Zuka stood next to her, and made a slight "grin" at the spectacle.

Sasuke walked up front with Kakashi, trying and failing to look like a bad-ass. It was hard to do when a huge muscular alien with dark purple armor and plasma rifles in either hand was walking just next to him.

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They were halfway to the village, and night had fallen. The group had made camp for the night. Orda had sat on a convenient log just I little bit away from the fire they were starting, he decided to pull out the small holographic projector he had brought with him. He started it up, and its blueish light lit up his area. He promptly started a simulation file of a skirmish in a cave environment.

The computer generated several squads for him to work with. He had three groups of two elites and five grunts, a pair of hunters, a squad of special operations elites, and two ghosts. He immediately sent the ghosts patrolling the exits, so the humans could not escape without detection. He sent the rest of his forces in two groups headed down separate entrances.

Naruto saw the light show going on in front of Orda, and decided to take a look. He walked over and sat next to him on the log. He couldn't immediately get what was going on and decided to ask, "Hey Orda, what's this thing."

"It is a simulation file, designed to allow commanders to understand advantages and disadvantages of combat situations. I am inexperienced in cave operations, and I need to be ready."

"Oh, cool." he sat and watched with interest. He noticed a flicker of movement just in front of a bunch of odd thorn shaped creatures. Shortly after, he heard several loud cracks, and two of the creatures fell down with blueish matter spraying out. It took him a moment to process that they were dead and that was blood. After this two large armored beasts stood in front of the rest of the troops, hunched over, and fired some large green bolts towards the darkness. Explosions sent several of the opponents flying, and a massive firefight broke out. It took Naruto another moment to process these were humans. _But these are from his world, I remember him saying humans were united there though? Why would he-_ Naruto was dense, but he wasn't stupid, he quickly caught on to this revelations meaning.

"You killed us?" He yelled at Orda, furious that they lied about something like that.

Orda was startled by the sudden outburst and fell backward off the log. "What?"

"In your world, you killed humans, that's who you fought!" He yelled out again.

Kakashi and the others quickly took out knives and readied to attack the elites. The elites reacted and pulled their weapons.

Orda saw this and yelled, "Elites! Hold your fire!"

The others gave no confirmation that they heard him, but they also didn't shoot. Naruto at this point looked about ready to tear out Orda's throat. Orda stood up and regarded the humans.

"Yes, humans were our opponents in war, **THEN**." he made special emphasis on the then. "However at that time we were blindly following orders from the prophets."

Naruto slackened his muscles slightly, listening.

"We did fight humans, and many died on both sides, much more on yours." he said, "We were made to believe that you were a threat to our gods, as you had colonized many of their previous worlds. We fought you bitterly under the assumption you were simply ignorant apes."

"Yeah! And what changes your mind so much now! Aren't you still just going to do what these "prophets" tell you to do?"

"SILENCE YOU IMPUDENT WHELP!" Orda yelled.

Naruto jumped back a bit, surprised at the outburst.

"The prophets have proven themselves to be cowardly and disgusting creatures, manipulating thousands to send to their deaths, so that they may gain more power. They have even betrayed us, the most loyal elites, and massacred our councilors and many of our other brethren." he growled out, "I will surely die before I take any order from a prophet, or their simple minded brutes again."

Naruto was unsure if he should believe this, but he remembered when he had been talking with Jira at the ramen stand, they both showed no signs of lying, and were consistent with each other.

The elites saw Naruto calming down as he thought, and they lowered their weapons. The rest of team seven followed this action a moment later for the same reason.

"Sorry Orda, I didn't know what was going on." Naruto apologized, his eyes glancing at the piece of shoulder armor Orda had given him.

Sakura trusted Naruto on his decision and calmed down, he had a strange way of being right about people. Kakashi knew, and did, the same. Sasuke wasn't as trusting, but saw the others, and knew he couldn't take all four elites himself right now.

The group decided it was best they sleep at this point, and both parties set up watches.

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Orda had taken the second watch, and was dividing his view between the surrounding wilderness, and team seven. He watched Sasuke switch with Sakura and go to sleep. Sakura then took her position and mimicked Orda's own actions.

After a bit, Sakura stood up and made her way over to Orda. He placed his hand next to his blade, but otherwise made no action against her. She sat down beside him and had a very worried expression.

"Orda, yesterday, you asked me about Sasuke. I am worried about him." Sakura confessed

"How so? Is he not well?" Orda replied back confused.

"Its not that. Orochimaru made him a offer of power if he betrayed Konoha."

"I don't see why he would take such an offer."

"Sasuke is the last survivor of his clan. He wants to kill the man who killed his family." She sadly replied.

Orda paused a moment, "...this... is a difficult matter for me to advise on... revenge is a important desire to elites, but so is comradery. This is not a circumstance that is common where I am from." he said, "However, I myself, would not resort to betrayal to gain power, it would be too dishonorable to be respected with revenge. Whether he may have other motives though, is to debate as well."

There was silence for a moment, "That mark on Sasuke's neck isn't a bruise is it?" Orda half stated. _Knowing what I do of these people, that may be some of this promised power._

Sakura's only response was silence, "If he is the comrade we know and trust, he still shouldn't leave. If he does, then he isn't the one you care for." Orda said.

"I hope you're right." Sakura responded.

_So do I. He is much to young a warrior to be tainted with dishonor._

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The next day was uneventful, the group reaching the village without any problems. They quickly got a guide (after complications with appearances) and were led to the main entrance to the cave. The guide looked around nervously when they arrived.

"Hey, what's wrong with you?" Naruto asked.

"We had sentries over this entrance. Where are they? The raiders wouldn't have taken them. But I see no bodies." He nervously stated.

"Don't worry, they may have been taken as extra hostages so the raiders can escape. We'll find them, and we will bring them back safe." Kakashi calmly stated.

The group then walked into the cave, they got about seventy meters in when a breeze shifted outside the cave, and brought the stale air from inside to the party.

Immediately Qwaar and Orda drew plasma swords, and Jira and Zuka armed their plasma rifles.

"Woah, calm down! What is it." Naruto asked.

"That stench," Qwaar started.

"We've smelled it before." Orda finished, and added, "We should leave this place, we are not able to handle this infestation."

"What do you mean? Infestation?" Kakashi asked. The elites were unable to respond however, as a loud rumbling was heard, and the entrance to the cave collapsed. The group was plunged into darkness for a moment, before Sakura lit a flare. Its red light showed the others to be fine.

"Well that was bad luck." Kakashi stated.

"Bad luck? No. Sakura, toss me a flare." Qwaar said. She quickly complied. He lit the flare, and tossed it at the rock pile.

"Why did you do that?" she asked, annoyed he had wasted a flare.

"Look up." Jira responded for him.

She did so, and let out a huge gasp. The rest of the group, looked to see why, and followed her example. The ceiling had a strange growth that was exposed when the roof collapsed.

"You better steel yourselves now, as we must face our opponents soon." Zuka said.

"WHO ARE OUR OPPONENTS? Why do you know so much about this? What is that stuff on the ceiling?" Sakura asked.

Orda responded to all three questions with two words, "The flood."

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A/N: DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUN!

Ah and it hits the fan. Bet you didn't see this coming... okay you probably did.

But anyway, a rapid update, I hope you enjoy, this isn't likely to happen again. (Though it is possible)

well, hope you enjoyed the chapter, please leave a review, I accept anonymous ones so don't think you have to log in or register.


	9. The Flood

A/N: well, I'm sure you all realize a few things about the temporal placement of this event, and rest assured, it will be relevant. I'm not going to elaborate for fear of spoiling the plot, but be patient.

The one called sugar: YES!

Ten Wings: you forgot the doom.

Dragon man 180: while I do hate Sasuke, its for honorific and tactical reasons. From what I've seen, he's a tactical retard. He also is honor-less for betraying his own village under the conditions he did..

Crow T R0bot: you make assumptions too quickly. Keep reading you'll see my reasons. Thanks for the meter on the gravemind, its very enlightening, though a bitch to write. Though upon checking his phrases as he talks, I notice he doesn't usually talk in septa meter at all. he tends to just have two lines of similar syllables in a trochee format, plus one extra word. He also switches to iambic occasionally.

And also I must make mention, this chapter would not have been possible in the superb form it is, if not for the help of Gloria Stone, another writer, who gave me some of the dialog. (By the way, to said author, I didn't need to change it after all as most of the words lined up anyway.)

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"The... flood? As in water?" Naruto asked.

Orda scoffed at the lack of knowledge on the human's part, but realized they had never dealt with them before. "A parasite more powerful then you shall ever see." he said, "We should make our way out of here, we don't have sufficient strength to fight these opponents, we would be overwhelmed."

"But what about the miners?" Sakura asked.

"They are already dead." Jira replied.

"Pretty quick to abandon them aren't you?" Sasuke stated.

"Quiet you impudent brat, the flood are not to be trifled with." Qwaar retorted.

Kakashi interjected before things got out of hand, "Well we should at least get moving, and right now we only have one way to go." he said, gesturing further into the cave.

"So be it." Zuka stated.

The group got into a rough formation, and proceeded down deeper into the cave. Sakura still held a flare in front, and their sight range was also extended by the glow from the elites plasma weapons. The group started to become tense in the silence, the only noises were the footfalls they created when they stepped on the hard rock, or in some cases, the soft protrusions of the flood that had infested the cave walls.

The group was also unnerved by the larger blobs they would see periodically on the walls. It showed just how much organic mass whatever they were headed towards, had. Some were the size of people, others, though they didn't project outward very much, were wide enough to block the cavern if they were placed in the way. Suddenly, Orda had a horrid realization.

He ran up to one of the larger blobs, and pulled out the map.

"What is it?" Jira asked.

"Come here, look at this." he gestured to all of them. They all walked over, eager to hear his news.

"I've been noticing these larger masses, and I have just realized that they are consistent with these." He noted several capillaries on the map, some of which led out. "We are being herded."

The humans in the group paled upon hearing this, the elites growled in irritation.

"Well I wont be played for a fool by this loathsome parasite, step aside." Qwaar said, pulling his sword up to chest level, before driving his blade into the flood mass in front of him. When he did this, the "wall" shuddered, and a pained roar was heard. This was followed shortly after by a rumbling beneath their feet.

"Smooth, show off." Naruto sarcastically stated. The ground a little ways behind them then collapsed, and the cave-in was moving towards them. "OH SHIT!" he yelled.

It stopped slightly before them, which ushered a confused "Eh?" out of each of them. They then noticed the slimy slithering sound coming up the newly formed cliff. Qwaar immediately leaned over the ledge, and fired his plasma rifles. The blue bolts flew down into the darkness, and momentarily illuminated a huge mass of head-sized grub-like creatures, skittering along on their tentacles. The plasma bolts did little to their numbers, but it did show a vague impression of just how many there were.

Orda yelled to run in covenant, startled to the point he forgot about the humans. The humans caught on pretty quickly though, and followed the elites only a few steps after. They only got so far though, before another mass started moving through a small crevice in a wall, and they started pouring in all around them. The elites started slashing, and firing every time some got close. The ninja slashed, and avoided them when the flood lashed at them. After a while though they where forced to spread out by the endless onslaught.

Naruto had just run out of shadow clones and was about to create more, when he noticed Sakura being forced to a closed off side passage. "Sakura look out!" he yelled.

Unfortunately she thought he was talking about a infection form that he noticed lunging at her, she jumped back, and smashed through the thin plywood and fell screaming down the steep incline, deeper into the tunnel.

"SAKURA!" He yelled.

Sasuke turned, guessed what happened and yelled, "Katon Ryuuka no Jutsu!" before promptly blowing a stream of fire at the flood, eradicating any in the way of the flame, and clearing a path for Naruto. "Naruto! Go!" he commanded, not able to get there himself before the flood did.

"Right! Thanks Sasuke." Naruto said, then set off down the passage in a much more graceful manner.

Unfortunately, the heat of the flames seemed to quite effectively piss off whatever was growing in the cave, and a huge tentacle lashed out of the ground, and smashed the entrance to the passage, before lunging at Sasuke. Sasuke, being a ninja, wasn't easy prey however, and the dodged it and sliced off a good five feet of the tentacle. The tentacle then slumped to the ground, apparently defeated, Sasuke gave it a look of contempt, before another length of dead tentacle landed in front of him. He spun around, and saw Kakashi standing amongst a bunch of stunted masses, which Sasuke then realized had been heading for him.

"That boy seems to have made the parasite think twice about attacking us." Orda stated.

Sasuke looked around, and saw that besides themselves, the cave was empty.

"Yes but Naruto and Sakura are cut off from us." Kakashi said, pointing at the rubble that was the side passage entrance.

"We will have to regroup further ahead, most of these passages seem to lead to a large cavern, this one, and that one among them." Orda said.

Qwaar nodded then added, "but keep in mind, that's probably where the parasite is herding us, odds are if we try to regroup there we will be overwhelmed."

"Not as if we have a choice though, I'm guessing that's the only way it will LET us go." Sasuke stated. The rest of the group nodded solemnly.

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As Naruto continued down the shaft, he noted while it was completely survivable, it would be none to comfy to fall all the way do this shaft. It was very steep, and had inconsistent flooring, rocks that would hurt a lot on the way down Sakura had taken, and it was DARK. Soon enough he reached the bottom, which was illuminated by another of Sakura's flares.

She was checking her bruises to see if any bones were broken underneath, and gave a sigh of relief after finding none, and noticing Naruto's arrival. "Kakashi is going to kill me for not being aware of my surrounding huh." she jokingly said, trying to keep calm.

"If that's the case, I'm dog meat for just jumping down after you." he played along.

After this exchange a loud gravely voice boomed around them, "The silence of the grave has been broken. Simple ones of flesh and faith permeate the crypt. But they are not of mere mortality, as an aura spreads from four."

Naruto and Sakura noticed an odd hesitation between each phrase, and he accented syllables in a pattern, but were much more attentive to the fact that the voice didn't come from any one direction.

"These two groups, shall sustain my soul, and keep it bound to this world." the voice finished, a strange figure began walking from the shadows of the cave, moving slowly to the light.

Sakura noticed an object in its hand, which she quickly saw was a pickaxe. "Look its one of the miners!" She yelled hopefully. Naruto had a bad feeling though, while obscured by the shadows, the figure seemed menacing, it wasn't walking straight, and its head was at an odd angle. He readied a kunai in his hand just in case.

The figure then flung its arm forward, and threw the pickaxe at the duo, though missing badly. The mining tool buried itself in the hard granite behind them, implying the huge inhuman strength of the being.

"But? Why? Why is he doing that?" She asked, confused and afraid.

Naruto was about to throw the kunai, but the figure stepped out of the shadows, and he was frozen in horrified shock. Sakura gasped and muttered "My god."

The being was a horrid abomination, it USED to be a miner, that much they could tell, but something had twisted him, tortured his body, and made him into a hell-spawn-like creature. Tentacles protruded from its left arm. Its right, was dilapidated and boney, but still mobile and strong. Its abdomen showed similar dilapidation, and seemed rotted, as did the legs. As Naruto had noticed earlier, its head was twisted back. A strange yet familiar set of tentacles grew out from the chest cavity. _This is what Orda meant. A flood of these hellish things._ _I don't know how this happened to you pal, but I'm gonna end it. _Naruto then let loose the kunai, which plunged into the creatures chest... and shot out the back. Naruto gagged in disgust, before letting several shuriken loose, one of which hit the tentacle cluster, and killed the monster.

Naruto and Sakura walked over towards the corpse. Naruto shuffled through the body for anything useful. After a moment, he found a battered journal, stuffed into a pocket. He opened it and began reading, Sakura following along over his shoulder.

_We found a new cavern today with the fiber optics we were issued. We are going to open up a tunnel to it tomorrow. If we're lucky, we may get our quota for the month right here. I'll be able to show up for my daughters birthday party for once. I so hate this job, after next month, I should have enough money to search for a better one, one which will let me see my family._

_We opened up the new cavern today, we sent a team in, and they are late getting back. Kohaku was with them, he probably got himself hurt again, clumsy bastard. He's a good kid, a bit young to be working here, hope he's alright. Dammit I'm hungry, time for dinner._

The next entries were sloppily written, as if the miner had been rushed.

_My god, they found Kohaku, his body was mangled, it looked like a swarm of rats had attacked him or something. Luckily, the docs say he should be fine, though they cant move him much, but he's still breathing. His body reeks, and something seems off about him. If the docs aren't worried he should be fine, a few scars though. I only wonder where the others in the team are, and why they left him._

_MY GOD! What the hell is happening down here? We went back to the cavern today, and these THINGS came after us. They got most of us. I got away by heading away from the majority of the guys. I dragged Kohaku with me, he looks so ill, his face like a death mask. I shouldn't have jostled him so much, but I couldn't leave him for those THINGS._

_I don't even know if I wish to live anymore... Kohaku woke up today, but he was mad. He attacked me, and I tried to snap him out of it, nothing worked. He forced me to kill him. His mangled body barely held together from my pick. I want to rid myself of this thing, but I need it if those things come. I'm so lost in these damned caves, will I ever get out?_

_I am starved, and dying of thirst. I can barely move I'm so tired. I hear those things slithering through the caves now, they know where I am. I am doomed. I don't even have enough strength to kill myself. Suki, my daughter, I'm sorry for not being strong enough to get to you. Oh sweet wife, please, don't stay here, run from the village, go somewhere far and safe. I love you both._

There was a little more, but it was smeared off by blood. Naruto put the book in one of his pockets, deciding to try and help the man's family if he could. They looked at the body, before sorrowfully moving on.

The voice abruptly boomed again, "One shows strength expressed with flame. Another shows it in lightning. Questions linger on wether the pair apart from them have strengths."

Naruto and Sakura knew what the voice was referring to. They were disturbed that the thing knew were they all were at all times, and watched them so thoroughly. But at least while it was talking about getting ready to do whatever it wanted to do, it wasn't doing it, so it meant the others were alright. They tried their radios, but predictably, the cave blocked the signal. They went in random directions, as this portion of the cave didn't have any of the blobs blocking passages.

After about an hour, they came across a scene of utter carnage. Blood and equipment was scattered everywhere. No bodies where on the ground, but the blood spread radially from a small tunnel that looked man made. _So this is where he was talking about._ The pair was wary of the entrance, but curiosity got the best of them, and they peered inside. They barely held back their yells when they saw a huge monster. One that rivaled Gamabunta in size.

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The elites and the other pair in team seven had yet to encounter another large group like before. They saw occasional clusters, and they had been shown a similar enemy to the one Sakura and Naruto saw. It had some "friends" with it and the battle seemed to greatly un-nerve Sasuke. When asked about it, he confessed that he had fought in a similar incident with Orochimaru, and had been reminded when he saw an infection for burst from a hosts chest when it couldn't fight anymore.

Kakashi had been forced to use chidori on one that had snuck up on him. It had pinned him and he couldn't reach his weapon pouch, the elites were distracted by more combat forms.

After the skirmish the elites had taught Kakashi and Sasuke a little more about the flood, including names of the different forms in the life cycle. Needless to say, they were much more disturbed then they had even been before.

They continued on a little more before a voice boomed overhead, one which they had heard earlier, this time it was saying something about strange power. They took a moment to realize it was talking about Sasuke and Kakashi, and then Naruto and Sakura.

"We should make haste, for this presence is a dangerous one." Orda said.

"We nee to find Naruto and Sakura quickly." Jira elaborated.

"Steel your nerves comrades, we cannot turn back." Qwaar finalized.

"Then lets go, and take out whatever gets in our way." Kakashi stated. Sasuke smirked, and for a moment they were all invincible, as nothing would break their resolve. Even as flood swarms could be heard with their moaning roars ahead, the group charged forward with all their strength.

The flood forms could barely react to what was happening before they would be torn asunder by plasma swords, shuriken, kunai, plasma bolts, and jutsu. The group charged with vigor, and anger, towards the cavern. They didn't care if they were herded, as they couldn't do anything about that, but they were going their on purpose now. For their own respective reasons, each one of them would not allow another comrade to be lost while they themselves lived.

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Naruto and Sakura noted the sounds and shockwaves of explosions and heavy combat reverberating through the cave, and it was getting closer to the cavern they were watching. Naruto noticed that the creatures attentions was undividedly focused on one of the larger blobs that blocked the entrances to the cavern. _Wait a sec, why isn't this blocked? And why hasn't he seen us?_ Naruto dwelled on this for a moment before the realization came to him like a ton of bricks. _There isn't enough of him for the whole cave!_ Naruto relayed this sudden knowledge to Sakura, and she herself edged out a bit and looked.

"Hey, look there." she said, pointing to the other side of the cave. "That part is open too. The... stuff isn't even near that entrance."

"Think it's a way out?" Naruto asked.

"I'll check, hold this." she said while handing him the flare, and taking her copy of the map. "Yes there is a path that leads to the outside on the far side from the village. It looks like it was too uneven for the miners to use as a way to extract stones, so they ignored it, but we wont have that problem." she said, smiling. They just had to get back to the others, and avoid that monster.

She looked at the map again, and frowned. "But this is the only place we can meet up."

"Well, that sucks." Naruto stated. "Nothing we can do bout it though. Think you're up for sneaking around it?"

"Yeah, I can do that. And that route over there is relatively untouched." she said, pointing to a path that led around the edge of the cavern. "Though we will have a problem there." she then pointed at a long stretch or ground that would force them to get closer to the creature to go across quickly.

"The others sound like they will be here soon. We should get started at least." the fox carrier said. As they moved out of the crevice in the wall and began to move silently across the cavern. They thanked the god that the creature was distracted and hadn't noticed them so far.

Abruptly the sounds of fighting stopped, and a muffled human voice was heard on the other side of the blob over one entrance. The fleshy mass suddenly exploded and a huge stream of fire punched through. The beast made no move to retaliate, though it did flinch slightly in pain.

The group then came out of the smoke, and their steel resolve shot out of their bodies.

"What is that horrid parasite!" Zuka yelled. The others muttered similar phrases, and Kakashi noticed Naruto and Sakura sneaking towards them.

"I?... I am a monument, to all your sins" He said, in a practiced tone "I am referred, by those of flesh and nerve, as the Gravemind."

"Yeah? And what is it you want from us?" Sasuke asked.

"Sustenance." it simply stated, its huge maw gaping afterwards like a hungry bird.

Naruto noticed the tentacles hanging close to the wall, soundlessly moving towards the group. "GUYS LOOK OUT ABOVE YOU!" he yelled as loud as he could, before they both sprinted to the others to try and help them.

The others looked up and promptly annihilated the tentacles, but another was coming from a newly made blind side.

"I won't let you hurt my friends you ugly slime ball!" Naruto yelled again, throwing a kunai with all his strength at the tentacle, and pinning it to a wall.

"Naruto help!" Sakura yelled. Naruto turned around and saw another tentacle had been climbing after them. _He had seen us that whole time we were in the cavern._ He realized, and pulled out his last kunai and lunged into the air, and severed the tentacle, freeing Sakura.

"Sakura run!" he yelled, planning to hold the beast off, but the tentacle coiled itself, and launched at him, grabbing him. He yelled a bit, but he was already to high for the others to help him. The room seemed to freeze as the creature brought him up to his face.

"A child comes in here. As if he had nothing to fear." The Gravemind said, "Threatening me, and all that I see. He will fall, and in the end come to my call." it continues, bringing up another tentacle resembling the ones on the little flood spores.

_This thing actually is going to kill me! And the others..._ Naruto fixed an angry glare at the Gravemind. Had been paying attention, he would have noticed a slight burning in his tenketsu, and a red mist gathering around him. Not that he could focus anymore, as his thoughts were becoming muddied by something.

The Gravemind on the other hand had noticed the new developement. "A child, yet so much more." he realized aloud, "He has something dangerous within his core. Burning fire in the red swirling light." he knew he had to get rid of the boy before he became a larger threat. "Be gone now from my sight."

Naruto let out a yell that turned into a increasingly animalistic roar. However whatever carnage he was about to unless was interrupted when the Gravemind showed a slight bit of increased concentration, and several golden rings gathered around Naruto and removed him from existence.

Team seven and the elites stood in shock for a moment, then Sakura screamed, "NARUTO!"

Orda was likewise affected, but more outraged, "YOU LOATHSOME PARASITE!" He and the other elites all opened fire on the Gravemind in an attempt to avenge the loss of their comrade. The ninja quickly followed up with their own barrage.

The red chakra from Naruto's partial transformation still lingered in the air. The mist of burning chakra held up a moment longer, before collapsing on a central point due to its lack of a host. The effect was a large shockwave. The force of this flung the gravemind back into a wall, and knocked down our remaining heroes. The extensive damage to the cave system caused by all this began a rapid deterioration of its integrity. The end result was a cave in.

As boulders fell all around the team, they realized they had to run and get out. The Gravemind seemed to be retreating through a large crevice that it must have been covering.

"This place is coming apart! We need to go!" Kakashi yelled. Everyone in the group showed some form of anger or sorrow, but they realized the simplicity of the situation. If they stayed, they would die, and Naruto wouldn't come back. Nobody said a word as they ran to the opening Sakura pointed out from earlier, they were relieved to see that the flood growth had pulled even farther away from it, as it retreated with the Gravemind.

As they entered the small tunnel, Orda turned for a moment, and regarded the place his newfound brother disappeared. "Walk the path brother, be at peace." he said in honor, before turning to catch up with the others.

It was a long hard run to the outside, they had a lot of stumbles along the uneven flooring and having to dodge falling rocks. When they made it outside, they immediately dived to the sides as a rush of air and debris forced its way out of the cave while the majority of it collapsed.

There were a couple moments of silence as the ground settled, and people caught their breath. Jira stood up and looked back at the collapsed tunnel. _Part of the dream you told me was of people to respect you. Your acts have likely saved us. If those are forgotten, I wish not to know of what is remembered or revered._

They all remained in a sullen mood as they marched across the bluff that was over the mining system, they reached the town, and warned the people to evacuate to a safer place. The town leaders looked angry at the advice, but the team didn't pay that much attention, as they left the city and headed back to Konoha one man down.

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A/N: well another chapter out of the way, and likely a hell of a lot of short sighted flames. sigh. Well, guess I will sit back and submit this, I'm eager for your (hopefully) diverse responses.


	10. The Great Awakening part 1

(I decided that this chapter is taking a hell of a long time, so I will submit it in to parts, as, hey, you guys have been reviewing well, and I just haven't been writing that much, I can at least leave you with a DIFFERENT cliff hanger.)

A/N: hey look at that, I'm using jokes for chapter titles again (though this one is a little more obscure.) Sorry for the wait, but I had NO inspiration for the start of this chapter. It wasn't writers block, it was just absence of a solution. Thanks to some reviewer subconscious prodding, I now have a way to progress again (I had an outline, but I scrapped half of it, you guys helped me repair it.)

one more thing I've been worrying about readers possible thinking. THERE WILL BE NO ELITE ROMANCE!! While it would add another twist, it wouldn't be something that people want wandering around in their heads all day.

Dragon Man 180: as stated earlier, putting the master chief in here would be very awkward. Beyond this, he is currently on earth, doing what he does best (keep in mind the time frame here).

The elites have been in Konoha for over 2 months, Master chief and the Arbiter (omfg spell checker says that's the right spelling!) are long gone. So, while you will be somewhat satisfied, the master chief and arbiter, aint happenin

Sugar: Thanks for the helpful review, you gave me some structural ideas. But kyuubi has enormous chakra reserves, the chakra left behind was minimal, it just happened to explode.

Crow T R0bot:umm, yeah... I changed my mind on the matter, though it will be mentioned in this chapter, you just know it a few paragraphs before anyone else. I want the novel, but it seems to be taking a eternity to get out, I also knew someone on a forum who was writing another novel, but while Bungie approved it, Microsoft didn't. and as for your pm, I cant very well tell you that without spoiling the plot :P

Islagat: do I have to get out my woop-ass stick to keep you people from guessing what I'm going to do, you can practically get the next chapter out of the reviews. Thanks for being a smart enough person to guess though.

Phoenix half-breed: I actually stopped there for convenience, not for the cliff hanger. But here is the next chapter.

Lastly, please, a moment of silence, for the loss of the best halo mod ever made, Halogen. It had been going for more then 3 years, and was so close to completion, and it was the true first halo RTS. But Microsoft stomped on it, after knowing of it for 2 full years. I'm sure you have all heard of halo wars. I have, and I know its truth, it can burn in hell. They only did it cause of halogen's success

Well, you didn't come for a rant, back to your regularly scheduled fanfic, already in progress. The last memo I give is some quick trivia. In halo, rangers are those elites with the jet packs.

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Ranger Onis 'Nadarmee stood scrunched up behind a column of metal on a pathway. The sound of unrelenting weapon fire behind him served as an unnecessary reminder that he was vastly outmatched and outnumbered. He heard the far door open again and noted likely more brutes and come through. He ran to another column when he heard the characteristic "clunk" of a brute shot being fired. The grenade blew apart what little remained of his previous cover.

_What wretched luck. _The ranger thought to himself. He had been with several other elites and grunts, who were trying to retake the station for a rally point in a counter offensive. They in turn were part of several extensive infantry battalions. They had gotten split up fairly quickly however by the flood pockets they kept finding, not to mention brutes who had the same plan of retaking the station.

Two grenades then slammed in succession into the pillar, and he felt it reverberate and crack. _If this is how it ends, I will not die hiding._ Just as he prepared to leap out of his cover, he heard the line of fire shift and his cover stopped taking hits. He looked out confusedly and saw that a group flood had made their way to the brutes. Onis took this opportunity to run, the small amount of flood wouldn't hold the brutes attention for very long.

He charged through the doors, locking them from the other side, and ran down the halls. He didn't have to worry about hidden foes as he had cleared them out when he came through earlier, and flood being the only threat were far from stealthy. As he ran through one corridor, however; he heard a moan, which he quickly designated as a human, most likely in discomfort. The elites having made an alliance with humans, he went to assist. _I didn't remember seeing any as I came through the first time._ When he jumped up on the raised section to the side of the main hallway, he noticed the most obscene and eye burning orange jumpsuit wrapped around a human boy.

It was obvious he was unconscious, and Onis saw fit to stay put. The brutes had likely abandoned pursuit, and if they hadn't it would take a long loud process to get that door open. _Now boy, how have you arrived here, and how have you survived?_ Onis's thoughts hesitated a moment as he spied a shoulder pad on the boy. _And how did you get that symbol? _

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The elites and humans passed back through the towns gate, with one less then they left with. The villagers who had come to leer at the "abomination" quickly noted this, and seeing the grim expressions on the group, deduced the fate of the missing member. The vast majority tried to hide a sneer... failing miserably, and others didn't even hide it.

Jira noted this fairly quickly, and snarled while reaching for his sword. Orda grabbed Jira's wrist before he clenched the blade, and stopped him. Zuka had fought back his own reaction, while Qwaar remained calm, though, if one knew his normal movements, the would notice the slight twitches towards his weapons.

The humans reactions, while passive, were fairly equal to their elite counterparts. Kakashi showed great disappointment in his eye, and glanced at the genin occasionally to make sure they weren't trying anything. Sakura looked disbelievingly at the villagers, not knowing why they would act like they were. Sasuke, not expecting the "welcome" either, was more shocked then appalled, he regained his cool fairly quickly though and moved on.

The trip to the Hokage Tower was fairly consistent with the reactions, until just shortly outside the doors, where hinata happened to be walking by, likely finishing some business. She glanced up, and saw the group, quickly moving to meet them. She stopped a few yards away, glanced left and right quickly, and stuttered for a moment. She finally was able to ask, "Wh- Where's Naruto-kun?"

Though she spoke quietly, the group stopped as if she had been loud as a megaphone. The humans attempted to think of a response, when Jira responded simply, "He fought valorously, and now walks with the ancients."

The humans all had thoughts similar to "Don't just tell her!" or "Soften it a little you monster!" before realizing that was about as well as it can be done. One cannot lessen the pain of loss for another, they can only offer support.

Hinata's reaction was delayed as she contemplated what he meant, but when she realized it, she broke down completely, falling to her knees and tears streaming down her face. Sakura quickly moved to aid her.

Kakashi scanned his compatriots to gage their reactions to the outburst. Sasuke seemed to be sympathetic to Hinata. Sakura was preoccupied with Hinata at the moment, but Kakashi could tell this was getting to her a bit as well. He then scanned the elites, who were seemingly apathetic. _Either they are heartless, or they deal with this a lot. If they were at war with those things we saw in the cave, I guess the second is more likely._

After a few minutes, Hinata managed to collect herself, she shakily got to her feet, and left for the hyuuga district. The group worried about her a little, but they knew she should be alright, she was a kunoichi after all.

The group once again faced the capital, and walked in, to debrief with the council.

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	11. Part 2

A/N: well, for better or worse, my internet is down... ah who the hell am I kidding, this sucks. But in the very least, it forces me to resort to other forms of entertainment besides playing MMO and my 360 (which, not surprisingly, is defective.)

LD 1449: to answer your first question, somehow. To answer your second, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PEOPLE, master chief is a long way off, defending earth, he holds no point to the plot of this fic, and he is fairly difficult to write for the very reason we all like him. Master (john) Chief also would have no reason to take orders from anyone in the naruto world, and he also would have no qualms about killing an elite if it got in his face, such may be hazardous to the characters we all know and love (ah, who the hell am I kidding. Plural?! Jira gets all the reviews)

Dragon man 180: I thought I said this, but I guess I didn't, they're on High Charity... or the flaming hulk of scrap metal that's left of it.

The one called sugar: yanno, for the hell of it, I'm going to have it be an OC from one of my deleted fanfics (it sucked, I deleted it) meet Patroclus ugly ass brute waves from the side

Noon6: where? I didn't notice any mistakes there.

Crow T Robot: while it seems pretty airtight that naruto would be the Hokage's son, it really seems more odd. I have a feeling that someone would eventually blab if there even was a son, much less if said praised son was cursed to be a wretched jinkurichi (or however its spelled, I'm willing to just say vessel) it wouldn't be too hard for an unknowing youngster to piece it together after a while. On other news though, thanks for the name, I can use him now (so vague I am)

Islagatt: once again (not you specifically), perceptive, but not enough. I'll tell why after the chap (to avoid spoilers)

grizzlyBUR: well, that was the general plan, not so much to be original or creative, but to not suck.

And to the guy who told me elite ranks, I don't think I've addressed you yet, but I cant find the email, I reject that logic. The elites might have different branches in their military, but the ranks would still translate for the most part, that's just the smart way to do it. If you have an operation where spec. ops. and regulars have to work together, you want them shooting the enemy instead of arguing whose bigger, the spec. op. corporal (I know that's a human rank) or the regular staff sergeant. So basically, a spec elite with any experience (as that's how they rank, with kills) would outrank a regular minor (blue). At the same time the white elite, half jaw, being the commander of special operations, would outrank a captain, like Orda. But a ship master (same armor, but in my theology, I made them have black trim) would outrank even the spec ops commander. The thing with the Arbiter would be a jurisdictional nightmare though, if I were an elite, I would not want to have to deal with the pissing match that would make.

My advice is, take everything on bungie . org with a grain of salt, because that's a fan site made of less than brilliant people (Bungie . Net is the real site FYI, org is a fansite)

I also bring up the elite culture point, that a name is an honor to them, so for example, if little billy tells an elite he even has a name, that would be like saying "I can eat solid food, so I'm just as strong as you." generally this equals pissed off elite. This is covered in the halo books just so you know.

by the way, see if you can spot the weapon from halo 3. I read about it in EGM and the real bungie site.

But anyway, you came to read the second part of this chapter, so lets get this started

"_Italics."_ covenant speak

also the ending authors note actually is kinda important, read it.

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Drip... drip... drip...

Naruto's eyes slowly opened, and he took in his surroundings. He noted the cement-brick walls, covered in grime and several slimes, there was ankle deep water just next to him, in a canal, and everything was dimly lit with a grimy yellow light. If he didn't know any better, he would say he was in a sewer, but this idea was quickly shot down by the presence of a large gate in front of him, held shut by a single sutra.

He knew where he was, or rather, where his mind was.

The chamber of the Kyuubi.

He slowly picked himself up, and noted a current of stale air moving from the bars. The fox was awake, and watching him. Naruto dusted himself off, and walked to the center of the room, before facing the cage. He wondered if it was a good idea to ask the fox a direct question, then decided he didn't care, and loudly asked "EH! Stupid fox. What the hell just happened?!"

The fox let out a loud growl before replying "You may take pride in that for once, you know just as much as I." The fox then lazily opened one eye to look at Naruto.

Naruto then noted that the fox had likely been asleep, and subsequently wasn't much help. He also chastised himself for being paranoid in thinking the fox was watching him. "Well... great... that's a lot of help." He mumbled back.

"If you must know, we seem to be in a whole new realm." The Kyuubi noted.

"WHAT!?" Naruto yelled in panic, before thinking on it too much and continuing, "wait? what?"

"Humans..." Kyuubi annoyingly growled, "We are on a foreign world."

"Like... Suna?"

If the kyuubi had thumbs, he would pinch his brow to stem the approaching headache, he finally resorted to sticking a claw through the bars, drawing a crude circle in the dirt which he labeled 'earth' and then he drew an arrow into space, and labeled a dot 'where-ever we are now.'

"Ooooh, space." Naruto realized, before yelling "WHAT!? HOW!?"

"I thought we had already deduced I don't know." the kyuubi said, "Whatever happened had something to do with the rancid smelling slug we were previously fighting."

"Oh, right, gets kinda fuzzy right there."

"That's cause I was supplying you with chakra."

"And why did you do that?"

"Because you're a pathetic weakling." The kyuubi laughed, "and before you start yelling, maybe you should prove me wrong by waking up."

Naruto closed his mouth halfway in yelling a retort, and decided to try to do such.

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Onis shuffled uneasily a moment, he had heard some muffled explosions further down the corridor, and he heard occasional beeps from the door he locked to keep the brutes out, meaning they had a hacker. Pretty soon he would either have to leave the human, or carry him into combat, neither way guaranteed either of their survival. Also, upon further examination, he found the human was only a child, though he did have the mark of a zealot, and Onis had found numerous weapons on his person.

The human started grumbling a bit, and Onis thought he picked out something about a "Stupid fox" but decided it was merely delusion, but it did let him know the language the boy spoke. The boy sat up and groggily yawned, as if he had been in his bed moments ago as opposed to comatose. He looked at Onis, who half expected him to scream and yell, but instead he started talking.

"Hey, you have directions to Kohona?"

Onis stared at him a moment, trying to see if he was joking, or just insane. After a couple uneasy moments, he figured he didn't care, and responded, "No."

The boy sighed, then looked around the room, suddenly wide awake as he saw the metallic sheen, the holographic computer interfaces, and he quickly asked, "Why the hell is everything pink and purple?"

While this wasn't an uncommon question for humans to ask, Onis still wasn't expecting it. He felt slightly insulted regardless and replied, "Why are you wearing that disgusting orange clothing?"

"Touchy." the human retorted. He then continued, "By the way, my name's Naruto Uzumaki."

Onis rolled his eyes behind his mask, once again wondering why humans named things of such little importance as children. "I am Onis Nadarmee. But introductions can wait for another time, we need to move quickly, brute forces are breaking in."

As if on cue, a bright yellow plasma fire made a small sun in the middle of the door. "Damn! They are going to blow the doors! Run!"

Naruto didn't get exactly what Onis meant, but he didn't really feel like staying to find out. He followed just a couple steps behind Onis to get to the other door in the hallway, they didn't get very far though before the door exploded. The concussion from the blast knocked Naruto on his face immediately, and made Onis loose his balance, and fall a second later. They then both rolled behind one of the modules in the center just as the brutes saw them and opened fire. Onis took a quick peak at the opposition before ducking again and grumbling something in his own language, Naruto guessed it was a curse or something.

The plasma fire stopped for a moment, and Naruto asked the elite why. "They have a brute shot, they want to watch us be blown apart." he answered.

After hearing this, Naruto paled. He heard a grunt, a click, and a..."damn?!"

Onis laughed, then stood up a moment, and yelled, "That is what happens when one uses such primitive weapons. Stupid apes!"

The brute holding the brute shot chucked his weapon at Onis, who dodged the slow heavy device, which then slammed into a wall, and clicked, indicating that the grenade had been forced into the chamber. This only served to enrage the brute more who then dropped down, and began to charge on all fours.

Onis had wanted this, and pulled something from a compartment on his waist, and waited for the brute to come. The brute lunged, only to have the elite spin to the side, slam his palm into the brute's shoulder, and kick him in the back, making him slam into a wall a little ways away.

The Brute roared again, before hearing the sound of sizzling flesh and the gaseous hissing of a plasma grenade attached to his shoulder. His loud scream and subsequent death served to: please Onis, show Naruto what a brute getting its ass kicked looked like, and startle the other brutes. Onis then pulled out his needlers and unloaded on the brute force, which barely had enough time to take cover behind the doorframe they just blew open.

"Why do you hide apes? You shouldn't be afraid. Come on out, I have a banana."

Naruto laughed a bit, which was the last straw for one brute, who came out, and was greeted with a fatal cluster of needles in his face which was ripped apart when the needles exploded. Onis then motioned Naruto towards their escape door, and followed before the brutes saw them, making sure to grab some spiked devices off the remains of the brutes corpse. He then armed them, and stuck them to the other side of the door.

At the last moment, one brute looked and yelled, "They're running! After them! Its just one elite and a human."

The brutes fired at the two, but the doors closed and blocked the shots. "Damn! After them!"

The rest was drowned out, until the group reached the door, at which point Naruto and Onis noted the thump-thump as the spike grenades went off, and maimed or killed most of the other brutes in a hail of spiked shrapnel, the rest were left screaming in pain.

Onis grinned, while Naruto noted the grim brutality of the fight. Onis was used to it, while Naruto was used to the faster paced and cleaner fighting between the ninja villages. He remembered when he found out from Orda how elites had been fighting humans. With the elites being in space and all, and humans being one whole side, he noted the war could be much nastier. He decided he would have to ask how large scale it was sometime, if only out of morbid curiosity.

A moment later, he was jarred from his thoughts as he walked into the back of Onis, and fell on his back with a loud oof. Onis look at him for a moment, before motioning to listen. Naruto did so, still ridiculously splayed out on his back, and he heard what Onis was stopping for. It sounded like several low pitched flutes we playing, and it was intermixed with a occasion crash, or explosion. It took him a moment to recognize the "flutes" as plasma fire, and the rest were more sounds of a battle.

"How well can you hide human? I need to see if any of my battalion is in that battle, so I can receive new orders from our cruiser." Onis asked, only slightly caring about the human at this point.

"Hide?! Heck, I can fight." he retorted, being cocky, he was insulted by hiding.

Onis was startled for a moment, before he burst out laughing, he was cut short though, when doing so disrupted the airflow from his re-breather, and he had hit his mandibles against the insides of his helmet. He coughed a couple times, and regained his composure. Naruto was standing there, with a highly annoyed look on his face. "Well, either way matters not. I would prefer it if you didn't get yourself killed, I went through some trouble staying with you until you awoke, so as to save you from the brutes. Try not to waste my generosity."

Naruto gawked a moment, surprised the elite seemed to have such little regard for his life. Onis seemed to think of keeping him alive as a chore instead of being noble. _They sure aren't going to be the main characters in a story._ He thought, as he remembered a day when Shikamaru had said so about him. He found the line odd, but funny. He quickly got his mind back on topic, as he had followed Onis down a hallway, and the sounds of combat were much louder.

"Judging by our location, we are reaching the base of the capital structure, this will mean a lot of open ground." he stated, before pausing a moment, "And judging by some of the sounds, a wraith is located somewhere, and firing at-" he was cut off, when the doors at the end of the hall exploded with the force of a plasma mortar's explosion. He then finished, "that door..."

Conveniently, when the smoke cleared, they had a direct line of site with the tank, which was then blown apart by several large green projectiles. Onis looked around the corner, and noticed the source was a group of elites and grunts, taking cover in a decorative canal. By the distance, the driver of the wraith either knew the pair was coming to assist the group, or had incredibly bad aim. Due to the lack of working security systems on the station, it had to be the later.

Onis motioned for Naruto to follow him, and they ran into the makeshift trench. Once they got there Onis almost jumped back out in surprise. "_Commander Vadumee! I wasn't aware that special operations was taking part in the assault!_"

Naruto looked at the white armored elite, noting his missing mandibles, as he replied, "_While it may not have been tactically sound to come, I could not stand idle on the ship any longer. I had to return to my own sanctuary._" he then gestured towards the remains of the destroyed tank, indicating the battlefield.

"_In that case, I respect your decision, but I need to know if you are aware of the fate of the Blood-Rain brigade._" Onis respectfully asked.

"_I see brother._" Rtas said "_I believe they are regrouping in the Mausoleum of the Arbiter. They set up a beacon cycles ago though, didn't you follow it?_"

"_No, I never recieved a notice._" Onis replied, confused.

Meanwhile Naruto was sitting innocently on the side of the trench, completely ignored, and increasingly confused by the conversation.

777777777777 (meanwhile)

Orda stood with his elites in front of the council. The rest of team 7 had been dismissed after the initial debriefing. He didn't know why they would want to see them privately, but he guessed he would find out.

A councilman to the left cleared his throat before speaking up, "I wish to apologize."

Orda was about to cede that it wasn't his fault, before he continued.

"We have misjudged you. at first we simply thought you were more demons that the Hokage was showing undue mercy towards, but now we see it was well placed, as you have removed a great threat to the village."

Orda now was confused, wondering if the humans had even listened to the debriefing, as the gravemind was still alive.

"It comes to our attention that the Hokage had informed you of the situation around the demon."

Now Orda stiffened, he had a pretty good idea of where this was going, and how bad it was about to get. He was glad he decided to tell Zuka and Jira about this recently, the confusion would have made things rather difficult to deal with.

"Thus it is good to see you put that knowledge to good use, and rid of the damned fox." The councilman grinned, and gave a nod several others around the table repeated this gesture.

Jira made a move towards his sword, and glanced at Orda, who motioned him to stand down. Jira glanced at the grinning councilors and at Orda, and did so again, before finally relenting. It only took a moment for the council to notice this exchange, and the lack of thanks for their praise to the elites.

One on the right twined his fingers, and calmly asked, "Is there something you wish to intercede?"

Orda thought about the comment for a moment, pondering how he should answer. He knew it would be unwise to anger the council, and that it may put him and the others at risk. He was their commander, and as such, he had to be responsible with their safety. He then came to note the various experiences they had with Naruto. Jira was developing something of a bond with the boy, probably because he found someone as talkative as himself. Qwaar seemed to respect him, most certainly more then he did Orda. Zuka was a bit hard to read on the matter, but like the others, he seemed like he would be dishonored if Orda tarnished the boys sacrifice.

Orda decided to respond, if he made the mistakes he had in the past, he was going to be sure to at least make different ones now. "Yes. I am afraid that you are sorely mistaken as to the specifics of the situation." He said, his voice tinted with a growl of anger, "Naruto was a capable and honorable warrior to the end, and it was his own sacrifice that allowed us to survive."

"Honorable!? Capable!? HA! The boy was nothing but a nuisance! And he endangered the village with his very existence! That vile demon knew nothing of honor or sacrifice!"

"Regardless of you opinion and position hierarch, I'm afraid I cannot agree. I will not tarnish his memory with such revolting implications." Orda retorted, now making effort to conceal his anger, "He has on numerous occasions endangered his very life for the people and servants of this village, in the end he did sacrifice that life for it."

At this point, the majority of the council was livid with anger. It was beginning to show in their expressions that they intended to have SOMETHING done to the elites. Orda decided his time was done, and finished, "It seems we were the ones to misjudge you, though at this point it matters little. We shall now excuse ourselves, and let both our parties sooth their anger."

Orda turned and left the room, careful not to slam the rice paper doors and break them, or the councils hold on their anger. As they moved down the hall, Orda checked the state of his compatriots. Zuka and Qwaar seemed indifferent on the matter, which was good, as it meant they had a good hold on their emotions. Jira on the other hand was seething, his lungs taking loud deep breaths, and his fists clenched.

"You did well Jira." Orda stated, "I apologize for your having to stand through that, I had not foreseen the councils actions. It is disheartening to see them throw away such a fine warrior, but they are the ruling authority here for now, violence against them would not have sat well with the village."

Jira's anger immediately dropped as he turned and looked at Orda, his face an odd mix of curiosity and satisfaction.

"Despite your patience however, I am going to have to order you to stay in the room for the duration of the day." Orda continued "It is not a punishment, but a precaution, I hope you understand that."

Jira nodded, his expression firm, indicating he wouldn't disobey or question the order. They exited the building and Jira set off towards the apartment. Orda then motioned Qwaar over.

"Go with him, make sure he doesn't have any **problems** on the way back." Orda said, indicating a second meaning with problems.

Qwaar merely nodded, and quickly moved to catch up with Jira. Orda noted the compliance, and was pleased with Qwaar not questioning him, it was too bad it was under these circumstances.

Orda dismissed Zuka to do what he wished, indicating that he wished to be alone a bit. After he had left, Orda looked at the horizon, before saying a short obsequy, "You were a honorable comrade, I hope that wherever it is your spirit has gone, you finally have the respect you deserve."

Orda noted the setting sun, and realized they had been in the council chambers longer then he thought. He then walked away from the tower, not going to the room as he needed to think things over a little before he headed back.

777777777777777777777777 (Read this A/N)

and there's another chapter, hope you enjoyed it, sorry it took so long, but at least the second part was full length.

So we now have the struggles set for the true rise of the fic. Naruto is stranded on high charity, currently incapable of returning, though he now has allies. Orda is finally starting to realize his own "Nindo." Jira is realizing the impurities of those who have power, and must decide how he will act upon it. Zuka realizes he will soon need to up his vigilance so he can be a proper adviser to Orda as the situation with the council escalates and they begin to make enemies in the village. Qwaar now begins to see the importance in the politics of his superiors' commands, and how he must follow them without question.


	12. The code of comrades

A/N: yet another chap.

One response I can note is that someone made a comment about the "banana" joke Onis made last chap.

In case you all haven't noticed, I've been putting taunt references all throughout this fic. "Come on out, I have a banana" is one of the rarer things elites taunt you with in legendary difficulty in halo 2, just like "you were a fool to challenge me" (the sound attack) and "I will spill your guts like a sniveling grunt" (also sound attack, its really bad ass to hear it in the game too, because allied elites say it to enemies while using plasma sword), these are all halo 2 taunts from the elites.

So if something deviates from my normal elite speech methods, it's because it is in the game, so I'm willing to stretch it. If you haven't heard it before, its likely a rare legendary taunt, just like the oh so humorous grunt saying "Arbiter, tell me a story." when you look at him. (I've only gotten that once)

and another reviewer comment, no Rtas will not be invincible, they did that in the game so we wouldn't have Cpt. Keyes moments (that's what I call it when the weak plot characters die when your escorting them.)

I mean, remember how many times Sgt. Johnson died in halo 1! I have his scream burned into my brain. (So much I can tell you he only has 4 screams, unlike the usual 7 from marines) so he obviously is far from invincible, except in halo 2.

And just to note the reference your making Islagat, aff, it was awhile, but I just wasn't in the mood to write. I have a hard time getting good stuff out if I'm not in the mood. Then again it may just be me being lazy, quineg?

777777777777 (back in halo-verse)

"_Sorry interrupt, but why human here?"_ a grunt asked from behind Rtas. Naruto only just now noticed it, and was surprised enough to loose his balance on the low wall, and fall into the small stream at the bottom of the canal.

Rtas looked at the human, apparently only just now noticing him. "_Ah yes, a good question. Brother, where did the human come from?_"

"_I found him unconscious while fleeing a large group of brutes. As to why he is aboard the station, and how he has survived, I do not know_."

"_Well, have you thought to ask him?" _Rtas asked,_"Generally these days, they will tell you._"

Onis monotonously turned and asked, "Why are you here human?"

Naruto stood up, brushed some water off his sleeve, and replied "For one, I told you my name is Naruto, not human. Two I got thrown here by some weird ugly slimy slug thing called the Gravemind."

As soon as the last words came out of his mouth, the grunts screamed and jumped back, and the elites froze before whispering to each other. Naruto shuffled back and forth a moment, wondering if it was all too bright to just say that up front, before Rtas turned to address him. "That being has been missing from the station for over two months. In fact, he has been missing from all of our sensors. Where is it that you saw it?" He asked, his voice a strange cross between worry, and satisfaction.

"Well, last I checked, it was in a cave next to a mining town." He replied.

"I'm afraid your going to have to be less specific." Rtas replied, "I was actually referring to Co-ordinates or a planet."

"Oh right, well..." Naruto wondered how he should put this, It didn't seem that Orda or the others were familiar with his world at all, so odds were it wasn't something they could normally get to. He finally decided to put it in terms of the said groups arrival. "Its kinda hard to get to, but two months ago is about the time that some of you guys showed up. Do the Names Orda, Zuka, Jira, or Qwaar ring any bells?"

Rtas perked up at the last one, "I personally trained Qwaar. I remember him quite well."

"Good friends?" Naruto inquired.

"To the contrary, he was the most argumentative and insolent warrior I have ever seen. It is only through his prowess in active combat and stealth that I allowed him to make it into the special operations." Rtas noted in a strangely upbeat tone, "This is useful information though, if we can find a computer node, I could trace his last known position, and we can work from there."

"Oh, cool... how long will that take?"

"Not long, we are at the base of a major structure, so there should be a maintenance wing just below us." Rtas then addressed the other warriors in his group.

"Alright brothers, I have a new objective for us. We are to proceed below, secure a computer node, and find the beacon of the last know position of that elite!"

Two elites and five grunts yelled in affirmation. Rtas then turned to Onis, "I am sorry to supercede your current goal, but recent attacks have left me underpowered as it is, I need your assistance."

"I understand, it will be given." Onis gave a deep nod.

"Sir, what of the human?" one of the elites behind Rtas asked, his purple armor glinting in the light. He thumbed his carbine in agitation.

"He likely wont survive the journey." another purple armored elite noted, mirroring his companion's actions with a plasma rifle.

Whatever Rtas was about to say was cut off when one of the grunts yelled "Enemy here! Run away!" and ran panicking back and forth in the trench.

"Damn! These apes just don't know when they are beaten!" Rtas yelled. He look over towards the enemy, and noted there were dozens of them, though they were only infantry. Most of them were brutes, though, they were also supplemented occasionally by jackals with shields. "We don't have enough troops to handle this assault..." he morbidly noted. They would be gunned down before they could get to the door Onis came through, so retreat wasn't a option either.

Naruto decided at this point to contribute to the fight, at the very least, it would make them stop acting like he was a nuisance. "Don't worry 'bout it, I'll take em out!" He yelled, before readying his hand for seals. Rtas was going to ask the boy how he was going to do that, when he noted the hand seals and was distracted by the weird motions. The vessel was done quickly, having used the skill many times, and yelled out "Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"

Rtas looked confused for a moment, before a plethora of loud pops were heard, accompanied by a blanket of smoke. When this cleared, even Rtas could barely stand, the surprise hitting him like a hunters strike. There were easily fifty clones of the boy scattered around them, all of which carrying identical smirks. "Alright! Go kick some overgrown monkey ass!" Naruto yelled to his clones, which unanimously charged forward with ninja speed, and were quickly followed by the original.

The elites and grunts looked on, fascinated by the display of jutsu. Rtas was the first to regain his wits, and yell to his subordinates "Well, do not stare dumbstruck! Fight!" and he charged into combat while activating his plasma sword. The other elites followed shortly after, vaulting over the trench wall and firing their weapons. The grunts realized that getting out of the trench was much harder then getting in, and struggled for a couple minutes before deciding to just place bets on which one of them would get scolded first.

Once the enemy force got over their shock, they opened fire on the quickly approaching clones. Some clones got hit, but the rest immediately moved to evade, some using the smoke of popped clones as cover.

The clones reached the enemy quickly, and took out the smaller jackals first. The jackals panicked at the speed, and brought their shields up haphazardly, leaving feet or sides exposed to shuriken from the front. Those that survived the onslaught of shuriken where cut down when the clones maneuvered around their sides.

When the clones reached the brutes, the battle slowed down significantly, as their thick hide and fur proved difficult for the clones to penetrate. The brutes had a hard time with the clones as well, because even though they were mere shadow clones of a human, they still exhibited chakra reinforced muscle and were difficult to overpower. It was enough for the elites to arrive and do their fair share in the combat. The plasma rifle wielding elite rolled out of the way of a brutes heavy strike, before shooting it in the throat, the acrid smell of toasted fur and flesh pleasing the elite. He then took up the brutes grenade launcher, and blew another one apart as it charged him, before ducking under the strike of a brute from behind. He almost decapitated it with a strike from the bayonet, and left it gurgling on the ground.

The elite moved to engage another brute, when a pinkish streak punched through his shielding and into his chest. He was knocked back, gasping as the heated air rushed from his alien lungs, and another blast struck him in his now completely unprotected chest. This was followed by the shrill rap of a carbine as a green streak traveled from his comrade, to the jackal sniper perched on another platform, killing it and letting its body fall off the side.

The elite fell to all fours, as he gasped for air that wouldn't come. Then the shadow of another brute fell into his view. He reached one of his hands back, as if to stabilize himself, but instead he activated a grenade in his pouch. He roared before bear-hugging the larger brute, holding him in place with his last remaining strength.

The temporary blue star signifying his death enraged his comrades, and drove them to fight harder. Rtas impaled a brute on his sword, and swung the corpse to block incoming plasma fire. He then kicked the brute off his sword, primed a plasma grenade, and threw it at another brute, who caught it in the face. Screaming incomprehensibly, the brute tried to claw the item off his face, and was promptly obliterated by the blast.

While this was happening, Onis was leaping from brute to brute, giving the hell with his needlers, before rolling or leaping away and then flying off with his anti-gravity pack. He would occasionally lob a plasma grenade as well, usually managing to hit a brute, or if he didn't, a clone intercepted it, and ran into a brute.

Once in a while, a brute would manage to stray away from the skirmish, only to meet a fuel rod as the grunts fired from the trench. Others that strayed would be spotted by the carbine wielding elite, who would drop them with accurate rifle fire.

The harsh battle finally ended, when several clones tackled a brute, holding it down as Rtas stabbed it in the heart. The brute tensed up a moment, before falling limp and dead. While he was trained for this, Naruto was somewhat unnerved at having such a direct hand in the killing of these beings. His doubts on the matter were replaced fairly quickly by sorrow and anger at the loss of the special operations elite who sacrificed himself in the battle. He hadn't known the elite, but he was still a comrade.

Rtas joined the congregation that was gathering at the scorch on the ground that was their comrade. Naruto walked up just in front of the grunts who finally managed to extricate themselves from the trench. Rtas then looked up, and surveyed the relatively featureless plain of grass that was their battlefield, before he spoke up, "Damn the brutes, damn their Prophets, and damn this war. I may have long been a hardened warrior, but this is not a fate anyone needs." he paused a moment, taking in the scene again, trying to calm himself, "He died with honor, and we will avenge him with the Prophets' blood." he finished, clenching his fist, before releasing it, and gesturing towards a small enclosure on the edge of the plain. "That contains the gravity lift leading to the maintenance sector. We shouldn't encounter anymore resistance, but be careful." he said. The group moved solemnly, and without a word. They entered the enclosure, and rode the platform down.

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Orda walked aimlessly down the streets of Konoha. He was amazed how quickly the situation around him had fallen apart. They had secured residence in the town, and the trust of its leader. They lost the leader they trusted most in an attack, and the others proved to be much less trustworthy. They had gained comrades, knowledge, and a new resolve. Their team was now devastated by the loss of the boy they learned to know so well, and their lives were now at risk due to Orda's defending his memory.

Orda sighed aloud, then thought aloud, "Amazing that the most seemingly stable situation was so quickly broken. It took months to get where we were, and days to lose it." He noticed some commotion in a bar as he passed it, and decided on a whim to investigate.

When he looked inside, he saw Kakashi in a defensive stance with his back to the bartender, and several rather unkempt and pissed off villagers in a half circle around him. One from the right lunged forward, and hit Kakashi with a right hook, and sent him sprawling onto the floor. Orda noted that Kakashi was apparently drunk, due to his haphazard stance before being hit, and his inability to defend himself. Another man started forward, breaking a bottle of sake on a table, and moving in on Kakashi.

Orda had enough at this point and moved forward, the man closest to him turn just in time to get backhanded over a table. The one with the broken bottle turned around and managed to get off, "What the fu-" before Orda clamped his hand over his face and slammed his head into the bar, not particularly caring if he gave the man a concussion. The others moved to surround Orda as well. Noticing this, Orda let out a loud growl, and activated his plasma sword. The rest of the perpetrators looked at each-other with feared expressions, before yelling "to hell with this" and running off, stumbling over themselves to get out of the bar.

Orda then picked Kakashi up, and slung him over his should. The jar from being hoisted eight feet off the floor startled him back to reality. Orda saw him open his eye, also noting that the last of the people in the bar were stumbling out. Orda then somewhat angrily asked "What happened?!"

Kakashi looked over lazily, before replying "They started it. The wanted to-" Kakashi paused to give a drunken groan, "wanted to get back at the demons teacher."

"As would be expected of intoxicated fools in a business such as this! What I was asking is why you allowed yourself to be in such a position, as impaired as you are?!"

Kakashi's eye widened a moment out of surprise, before drooping sorrowfully downward, "It was too much, I failed again. I... I promised to not let any of my comrades die... I failed... Obito." He said, his voice trailing off towards the end.

Obito? Orda wondered, before deciding to discard the statement obviously not meant for him to hear. "So, a comrade has fallen, such is sorrowful but it is not uncommon in combat. What matters now is what we do about it. Do you think its smart to abandon the rest of your comrades and drive yourself to the break with alcohols?! If so you are mere refuse!"

Kakashi's eye widened, looking towards Orda. He then chuckled a bit, before replying, "Its funny you put it that way, I once told team 7 that those who abandon teammates are garbage."

Orda noted the coincidence, and chuckled a bit as well, "Regardless, this is not how comrades wish to see you, and I doubt Naruto would be please to see what you've done with yourself."

"No... I suppose not." Kakashi ceded, starting to nod off from the alcohol.

"It is our code as comrades to honor his sacrifice, and to do our best to keep such things from happening again."

"Our code as comrades." Kakashi said, before slumping and falling asleep.

Orda then moved outside with Kakashi still on his shoulder, deciding to head back to the room given that he didn't know where Kakashi lived.

7777

back in the bar, a cloaked individual walked over to the two unconscious men. Bending over, he examined them and found they were both alive. "Well, this is disappointing. They cowered and ran away before I got any good information. Well, they were all that could be acquired quickly. Good that they weren't paid much." he said. He looked towards the door where Orda had left. "At the very least I know their temperance, we will need to be careful if we are to eliminate them without making a scene, and that will take time. The council will not be pleased with this delay."

Another man then entered the bar, similarly dressed to the first, with a white porcelain mask poking out slightly. "He was rather susceptible to the suggestions of genjutsu. It was rather easy to herd him here."

"They don't seem to have much experience in dealing with jutsu, but it doesn't seem as if anything phases them. They cannot be scared or manipulated, thus genjutsu will not have much use."

The first man then used a memory wipe jutsu on the men on the floor, before setting off to find his friends. "It wont do to have them blabber about my hiring them, I'll have to keep them quiet." he stated, before leaving the bar in a blur. His comrade following just behind to help him.

777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777

DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUUN!

Well you saw it coming, sorry for the short chapter, but if fell together that way, sorry for the long interval as well.

Well until next time.


	13. The Beast

A/N: well, here is another chapter, not much to comment on. And as for the unfamiliar elite color I'm going to mention, its an Active camo specialist, they have different armor from Spec. op. or regulars.

Reviewer responses

Islagatt: I dunno, I liked 4 a lot, customizing my Vulture was damn fun, god knows how many variants I had. The jade falcon thing is kinda ironic because they struck me as annoyingly prideful (then again, all I've seen is some of them in a mech-warrior book and also the battletech cartoon, all the episodes of which are on youtube by the way). As for the crossover comment, you are reviewing a fic about technologically advanced religious aliens whom are fighting alongside a hyperactive orange clad ninja and his friends from school, I think the bar is rather accommodating at this time.

Crow T R0bot: Orda is a field master, the covenant is filled with em, a ship master may be more recognized, but the covenant fleet was pretty damn big, plenty of them as well. Its perfectly possible for Rtas not to have heard of any of our group, I just had a plot device filled coincidence that Rtas trained Qwaar (whom people still haven't seen the joke in his name, I suppose it is really obscure)

Dragon Man 180:... well that was a unique review. Not always do I see reviewers suggest ways for me to suspend disbelief better. Thanks, but its going to become rather irrelevant.

PaulRap Raptor: oh wow, thanks for reminding me about the other viewpoints I'm supposed to be writing. I had completely forgotten my plans there.

Ten wings: also cause I'm a bit of an asshole

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LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

The gravity driven elevator settled into place in the maintenance sector, which apparently was treated no better in the covenant then by humans. With the scuffed walls, broken circuit panels and discarded tools littering the floor, and the stench of acidic dust leaking from computer panels, it would be an understatement to call it unkempt. The group saw the door they were looking for just a little ahead, but Rtas pulled up a schematic from a computer panel anyway.

"It seems this sector is divided into four rooms, each connected to the ones next to it by a hallway. The room on the far side has the computer access we need." Rtas stated

"What of the other three?" Onis asked.

"The one through this door appears to be for ration distribution to the engineers, the one past that is a security hub, though its cameras are offline. The last room is just ventilation, and irrelevant subsystems."

"Well I see no reason to delay then." the carbine wielding elite said, before pompously walking up to the door and letting it automatically open.

Then a burst of plasma fire and a shotgun were barely evaded as the surprised elite fell on his back. A yell from his compatriots behind him prompted some noises of confusion from behind a barricade in the room.

A grayish blue armored elite then poked up from behind the barricade, a smoking shotgun in hand. "My greatest apologies comrades! I did not realize allies were near." he blurted out, his voice somewhat high for an elites.

The elite on the ground sat up in recognition of the voice and yelled, "Dammit Nych! How many times must I tell you to watch your motion tracker to tell friend from foe!"

"Ewch! Sorry brother, but you startled me." the elite now identified as Nych replied.

Ewch stood up and turned to his compatriots, "Behold, Nych Etsaree, my fool of a brother who managed to acquire a position in the military." he said, starting as if displaying a great leader, then trailing into describing an idiot. "I see you managed to procure a human weapon for yourself Nych. Corpse or flood?" he calmly drawled out.

"What? Now you accuse me of pillaging corpses? Of course it was liberated from the flood."

"Well, with how obsessed with human weapons you are, you cant blame me."

"Enough!" Rtas yelled, tired of the sibling argument. "Nych was it? What warriors are with you?"

Nych made a motion to his compatriots behind the barricade. Several grunts and two blue armored elites poked up from the cover, the grunts giving nervous waves.

"Alright, the elites will accompany us, can I trust you to keep this corridor protected with three more grunts?" Rtas asked Nych, while motioning to three grunts on his left, the one with a fuel rod cannon among them.

"Easily sir."

"Good." Rtas stated, before turning to face Ewch. "You, take the boy and the last grunt with you to the computer rooms, have the grunt watch the door, and the boy where you wish. I don't expect anything to go wrong, but the grunt is for caution. I simply don't want to have to deal with the boy."

Naruto made an expression clearly saying 'I'm right here asshole' before submitting, and following Ewch as they made their way to the hallway.

"We will be in the security hub. We need to discuss our next plan of action, hurry with the coordinate data." Rtas ordered, before heading out through a different door.

Ewch made a gesture as to argue, but decided it was too late, he sighed and looked at Naruto and the grunt, "Well come along then, best not to keep him waiting." he said in resignation.

They entered the hallway, and made it to the door fairly quickly, the room was set off from the hallway unlike the others, likely to keep unneeded personnel out. The lights were offline, further showing the unkempt nature of the hallway, though it seemed strange the engineers would let that occur, given their obsession with repairing objects. Ewch motioned for the grunt to stand watch outside the door, and for Naruto to follow him.

The room had several tall isles filled with servers, similar to ones someone on a human ship might find, though they were obviously much more advanced, and gave off little heat. The lights in here seemed to be on the same circuit as the ones in the hall, and weren't working, though the light given off by the holo-computers was enough at the time. Ewch picked one straight ahead and began starting it up, turning off his shield so as to easily access the computer. Naruto lazily made his way over to Ewch, just as he slammed the wall by the computer with his fist.

"Damn! The data directories are corrupted, that human AI must have done this before it left." Ewch complained loudly. "It will take awhile to find what we need, luckily the data files themselves seem untouched, but everything is disorganized."

Naruto let out an annoyed sigh, before deciding that at least things couldn't get any worse. He remembered a question that had been on his mind though, and decided to probe Ewch about it "Hey, can I ask you a question?"

"You already have, but yes, this work doesn't require concentration, its just damned tedious." Ewch replied.

"I've been out of the loop for awhile, so I don't really know how big this war has been, how has it gone?"

"Do you have a specific date in mind?"

"Just tell me from the start."

Ewch sighed again, somewhat regretting agreeing to answer the boys inquiry, "The war has lasted for a number of your human years, and it has mostly been in the covenants favor. The covenant has destroyed most of your colony worlds and military, and your casualties count in the billions." Ewch stated calmly, If he had looked he would have seen Naruto's shocked and mortified expression. "In recent events however, the covenant has split in two. The civil war happens to coincide with the final assault on Earth, as such it has bought your forces time to retaliate, and collect allies from the Separatist forces, which includes Elites like myself, the hunters, and the grunts. To be technical we also have engineers on our side, but they just stay with whomever gives them items to study and fix."

The elite then looked towards the still shocked Naruto and stopped tinkering with the computer. "Is something wrong?" he asked, as if wondering if the boy had a cold.

"I- I... its... I think I need to rest a minute." he shakily replied.

"Oh my apologies, I forgot that genocide is a delicate topic for humans. Take as long as you like, this isn't going to be done soon." He apologized.

Naruto just gave a brief nod, and slumped against the wall. He didn't know how long he had stayed like that, but at some point he let his consciousness slip into the recesses of his mind.

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"It even shocks me boy." The Kyuubi said, bringing the boy out of his stupor. "Though more because they have the capability to cause such destruction then the morals of it."

"But how does anyone do that? How can someone slaughter so many innocent people?" Naruto shakily asked, obviously not fully realizing who he was talking to.

"Its fairly simple, if one feels threatened, or if they have some benefit to gain from it, they will quickly decide to kill anything, especially if it is not related to them. You humans were really quite annoying, and I had possible gains from killing your kind. Though that thought process ended up with me being sealed into your stomach, due to my underestimating your race."

"Come to think of it, I don't think I ever asked you why you did that. Attacked the village I mean." Naruto noted, starting to calm down a bit.

"Do you wish to know?" the Kyuubi asked, obviously implying that Naruto didn't, though it confused him why Kyuubi cared.

"No, not really, no." Naruto said, while giving a morbid chuckle.

"Perhaps one day you will understand power and change your mind, but in the mean time you might as well wake up."

Naruto nodded, now a little easier about the situation. _Ironic that a genocidal demon makes me feel better about something_.

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Naruto groggily woke up, and noted the rapid beeping of the computer as Ewch continued to look for the files he needed. Naruto decided to look around the room a bit to see if he found anything interesting. He wandered past several identical columns of servers, not really seeing anything interesting, and he came upon the end of the room.

He was a little surprised to see a large bulge in the wall, as if something huge had rammed it from the inside. The wall was still fairly intact however and he decided to ignore it. He then started walking back to Ewch when he heard the door open, and close a moment later. When he looked around the last column, he didn't see anyone and was a little confused, "Hey Ewch, what was that with the door just now?" he asked.

"Probably just the grunt's nervous shuffling set off the motion sensor. If it was anything else we would have been informed." Ewch responded. The elite tapped a couple more keys, before pausing, and typing in one more command. The computer gave a beep, and brought up the coordinate data, along with time of departure and even telemetry data. "Perfect, no amount of corruption will beat my persistence. I am unstoppable!" He bragged loudly, before removing a small data cube from a port on the wall. Just after he did this however, the computer short circuited and went offline, bathing the room in almost utter darkness. The light from the door cast a slight eery blue.

The elite stopped bragging, handing the data cube over to Naruto, who placed it in a pocket. Ewch decided to look at the circuit panel, even though the computer wasn't needed anymore. He saw the computer panel was melted, and stood back up with a look of confusion on his face. "Well that's odd. It seems the coolant system was disconnected, but that cant be done by strain or even electronically. It can only be done physically." He said, dumbfounded.

If he was going to say anything else it was cut off by a large glob of slime falling from the ceiling and splattering on the floor in front of him. He pulled out his carbine and looked above him. On the ceiling was a large slug like creature, outlined by the blue light in the room. It twisted a little, and opened a large fang filled maw before giving a loud hiss and dropping on Ewch.

Ewch gave a panicked yell and he was knocked down, and began firing into the creatures side with his carbine in his right hand. The creature then clamped its maw on his head, while taking a few more shots. A loud crunch was heard, and the elites body slackened, obviously dead via decapitation.

Through this whole incident naruto just stood there in shock, having not even registered that the creature was in the room until it attacked Ewch. He then noticed a face sticking out from the side, one that seemed to be a humans in the past, the eyes looked to him and he mouthed out the words "kill me", though Naruto didn't understand it as it was in English.

These events compounded upon themselves in Naruto's mind and he gave out a yell, which drew the monsters attention. Naruto gulped, before noticing the carbine on the ground. He grabbed it with a vague idea of how it worked by watching the elite's fire their weapons, aimed at the creatures main "head" and fired until the clip ran dry. The slug-like being decided it had enough of the punishment and darted away behind a server column.

Naruto kept pulling the trigger until the carbine finally gave an auto release of the magazine which smacked Naruto in the face and brought him to his senses. He ran to the door, which opened quickly, and practically leapt to the other side, before turning to face the grunt... or what was left of it. Apparently the monster had snuck up on the grunt as well, and killed it before it could yell. The creature was ripped out of its suit, and missing most of its right torso, its bright blue blood was sprayed all over the corridor for a six foot radius.

Naruto then screamed and ran to the security hub, the door opening automatically to reveal several very confused elites.

Rtas was the first to regain his composure, "What is it?! Where are Ewch and the grunt?!"

Naruto gasped for breath a couple times, before responding "Dead! They're both dead, some monster came and killed them both! It was like the flood, but, I don't know what the hell was with this thing."

Onis looked alarmed and puzzled a moment before replying "Flood? But how would they-"

Whatever he was about to saw was cut off by a loud crash coming from the ventilation room. This crash was followed by another, and another, before an explosion of shredding metal was heard. The elites heads followed the direction of the noise as it continued to smash through the ventilation room, and into the ration distributions. They then heard Nych yell, "What is that abomination!? Open fire!"

This was followed by several explosions, the screams of grunts, and a final shotgun blast before a louder crash was heard, and Nych's scream of death was cut off with a loud slam of something being forced out of place, then several crashes were heard in the connecting hall, before a final slam was heard against their door. The elites all armed their primary guns, but the noises continued off back down the hallway, and up the gravity elevator, before one final crash was heard.

They all stood tense and motionless for a moment, before one of the guards who was with Nych walked to the door, and pressed the manual override when the door didn't open automatically. The door opened and the shotgun wielding arm of Nych fell into the room, severed from the rest of the body. The barricade that had been set up was ripped from the ground and shoved up to the door, blocking it. The guard jumped back, and looked back and forth in paranoia, as if expecting a threat to come from somewhere in the room.

Rtas forced a steely calm expression on his face, before asking Naruto, "Do you have the coordinate data?"

Naruto forced a nod, and handed the cube over to Rtas without turning to face him. He preceded to download the data into his armors computer, before tossing to the other elites for them to do the same.

"We will need to be very cautious from now on. We must stick together in tight formation. We still may survive this." Rtas calmly stated, "Thankfully telemetry data is on the records, so we just need to get to higher ground and request extraction."

The elites and Naruto nodded slowly, all eyes intent on Nych's arm, which was all that remained of what was supposed to be a unused defense force.

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Kakashi groggily sat up from bed, reaching for his night-stand which was next to his bed to grab his clock. When he grabbed air, and realized the stand wasn't there, he knew he wasn't in his own apartment. He looked about in alarm before he noticed the elites, sleeping in various places leaning against the walls, with exception to Orda and Jira who seemed to be elsewhere. He wondered how they slept like that before realizing there was only one bed in the room, and they had probably been used to that. He also noted with mild surprise that they had been screwed over by the apartment owner even though they had an order from the Hokage.

Zuka seemed to be already awake and he turned his head to regard Kakashi, "I see you are awake. Orda has already left with Jira to the warehouse, to oversee the final salvaging operations on the phantoms cargo. My orders are to serve your immediate needs and escort you back to your home." Zuka stated, then politely asked, "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Do you know how to make breakfast?" Kakashi drowsily asked, wanting something to distract him from his now noticeably pounding hangover.

"I cannot guarantee it will be entirely edible to humans. Survival training teaches us to make meals for ourselves from human materials, but it may be distasteful to your palate." Zuka responded.

"Never mind, I'll pick something up from a foods merchant." Kakashi dragged out, before getting off the bed, noting he was fully dressed. _Guess they wouldn't know to take my shoes off, now my feet are killing me._

With that gesture, Zuka moved towards the door, nudging Qwaar awake as he passed, "Watch the room, and remember what the Commander advised. We now have enemies here, be cautious."

Kakashi looked confused a moment, wondering how the elites had gotten enemies, before his hangover distracted him from the thought. He would have to get something in his stomach first, then think.

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Orda watched as the last of the phantom's onboard supplies were finally pulled from the twisted inner hull, and the rest of the crews set to removing the ruined pieces off hull and cannibalizing the crates for more panels to wield into place. Jira was behind Orda with a carbine in hand and making not effort to not seem threatening, taking frequent 360 degree turns to make sure they weren't being stalked.

The workers, currently quite afraid of the elite, moved quickly and efficiently to get their jobs done so they could leave, and let security handle the place. With exception to the occasion request of a tool, the workers were silent.

Orda was not particularly please with this result, it was inspiring fear among the civilians around him, which would restrict what support they would give if assassins attacked in plain sight. Orda didn't expect such an attack to occur in the open, but he didn't want to give the council any opportunity to fulfill their rather obvious wishes. Their intentions pieced themselves together quite well in Orda's mind when he considered his environment, and the expressions of rage on the councilors faces.

He also knew the council would lose its current position of power when a new Hokage was acquired, and it seemed the elites would make a likely choice for the other ranking delegates to send to retrieve the choice individual. Orda gave a mental sigh, he realized that whatever would occur would play itself out in a couple days no matter what he had to say about it. The most he could do was try to insure the survival of his subordinates and himself.

Jira's thoughts were more on the present. When Orda explained the severity of the situation to him, he wished that Qwaar or Zuka had been chosen to be his guard. He was worried because if he failed, it would mean not only Orda's death, but the death of them all. While he knew he was capable if he was vigilant, he still didn't want that fact looming over HIS head. While taking a random turn, he noticed a cloaked individual on the roof of the building across the street watching him. He wasn't authorized to fire at will, so he gave a shooing motion towards the individual to at least keep him from watching. The individual might have just been a crazy old man anyway so Jira didn't want to shoot him anyway. Whatever the circumstance the individual walked out of site and Jira reported the incident to his gold armored comrade.

Orda didn't even turn to acknowledge Jira, and simply though somewhat dejectedly stated "And now it begins."

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Well this chapter was going to be longer, but I think title difference and also the chapter break will be rather convenient for what I have planned.

Next chapter I'll explain what the deal is with the new flood mutations as well.

I'll try to get the next chapter out asap, as I kinda left you with Dual cliff hangers.


	14. Precurser to war

Before note, sorry I was so delayed in getting this damn thing out, I was doing other things, none of which were writing or school. I'm on summer break now though, so lets see how this goes. I've also been playing the halo 3 beta, so you might see some treats from that. Also, I've been watching the shippuuden, so its possible I may decide to extend the fic to encompass that (file it in the fifty fifty section, my biggest motive is competent Sakura)

A/N: well, another chapter. As a general note about the last chapter, the slug thing wasn't a juggernaut, it was something I made up. BUT juggernauts will be an issue.

Currently, I'm listening to a fan-made halo theme remix. It is one of the most amazing pieces I've heard in a long time, hope you'll check it out, you can find a link to it on youtube if you search: Halo theme: corpomix.

And now reviewer responses

Crow T R0bot: Alright people, since no one got it, Qwaar 'Jet, is the name of a class of capital ship in the space based RTS game homeworld. It means something along the lines of death god, or harbinger of death (according to an information compiling site I went to about the time of the start of this fic, I lost the manual to the game (which is sad because it's a huge manual, how do you lose that?!).

DarklightZero: alright, thanks for informing me on the typos, I'm getting a beta. But as for the later note, I don't portray ninja villages as that impulsive. The councilors are pissed and know who and what the elites are, the other villages don't quite know as much.

Causeiambetta: to tell the truth, I didn't realize the similarity until after posting, I was going for a "OMFG he's still alive and in agony in that thing! It'll do that to me too! Eek!" impression

note, this guy reviewed towards the end of writing this chap (actual writing that is, it was a long time ago due to my lazy ass) . Mercenary: YES! Finally someone who gets it. Behold the first guy to get the in joke on Qwaar.

_after that post, several other people got it as well, but he was the first so he gets the honorable mention_.

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Zuka and Kakashi moved down the street, the former carrying his beam rifle in a resting position. Kakashi had bought some soumen from a food merchant and was currently enjoying the cup of cold noodles. Zuka noticed that they had picked up a stalker while getting the food, said person being about ten meters behind them in a cloak that obscured any of his features. _Either a newcomer or an assassin, I'll have to be vigilant._

As they reached a gate sectioning off another section of town, Kakashi held his hand in the air and waved Zuka off, implying he could handle himself from there, before he went back to eating his noodles. Zuka was somewhat irritated by this, as he was fairly sure that Kakashi's presence was why the stalker wasn't making a move. As he turned around, the crimson elite noticed the stalker was completely absent. _Perhaps it was merely a newcomer._

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The door to the ventilation room hissed open slowly, its power intermittent due to stress on its systems. A blue elite entered first, checking the left side of the room, eyes focused on the huge tear where the other door was. His right side was covered by Onis, his already warmed boosters providing a glow that helped to cut through the greenish mist in the room. Another blue elite entered and scanned to top of the room as he moved forward, before his eyes traveled downward to the whole ripped open in the wall that was big enough to drive a tank through. Severed conduits tipped with plasma fires dotted the room in places where the beast had ripped through.

The elites looked to each-other, each giving a nod to the other, Onis then yelled, "The room is clear, come on in."

Rtas and Naruto moved into the room, surveying the enormous damage the unseen monster had caused. Naruto's teeth chattered in nervousness. He couldn't believe that it was so simple for the unknown monster to crash through the room, slaughter their men, and thrash its way to the surface.

"I cant get a transmission to the surface, the broken conduits in here are scrambling my signal." Rtas stated calmly, though one could sense the agitation coming from him as he spoke.

Naruto made motion indicating he heard, though the other elites didn't. The group then moved into the next room in a similar manner as they had the last, though a little more quickly. The elites in front announced the room was clear again, and told the rest to enter.

Unlike the last room, which only had technological damage, this room was very unpleasant. Copious amounts of blood was coating the area by the door, and a long streak of purple showed Nych's fatal path through the hallway. Shattered metal showed where the makeshift barricade had been ripped from the ground and smashed through the room. The greenish mist had also made its way into this room, cutting visibility, though one could still see the elite's corpse pinned to the wall down the hallway.

Naruto turned away from the hallway, and looked at a grunt who had been thrown into the corner, he was the most intact of them all. Against his better judgment Naruto walked over towards the grunt, and knelt down to its body. The creature wasn't missing any body parts, but was coated in blood. Try as he might, Naruto couldn't find how it had died, in fact, its gas mask was still venting waste..._wait a moment?_

Naruto turned to the others and spoke loudly, though not yelling, "Hey, this one is still alive!"

With the commotion, and the sound of a coherent voice, the grunt jolted awake. When it saw several large dark masses moving towards it however, it just panicked and rolled into a fetal position, even though they were just the elites.

The grunt whimpered before speaking, "please, no hurt. JuJu do all he could. Others die, me get thrown side, play dead. JuJu play dead. JuJu just want live."

Naruto felt sorry for the grunt and placed his hand on its shoulder. "Hey it's cool, no one here blames you, and there wasn't anything you could do. Don't worry about it, we're getting out of here."

"That may be a problem." Onis stated as he walked back from the elevator. "The power conduit for the elevator has been damaged."

"Can we repair it." Rtas turned and asked.

"When I said it was damaged, I suppose I meant utterly annihilated." Onis drawled out.

"Joyous." Rtas replied. "I suppose we have only one exit then."

All the group contemplated his statement a moment, before turning to look through the door at the gaping hole in the next room. Its presence seem to be foreboding death for the whole squad.

One of the blue armored elites shrank back, "Its impossible! We'll be ripped to pieces by those things!" he yelled, before starting to mutter. Rtas looked at him, disgusted by his lack of courage. The grunt began to shiver again out of fear.

"So your just going to sit here?" Naruto asked, a disappointed tone in his voice. The elite stopped blubbering a moment, before turning to face him, a confused expression on his face. "You'll just sit there when that thing is rampaging outside? Besides that what about the monster on my world? We are the only ones who know its there, if we don't get out of here, it wont ever be stopped." Naruto said as his voice started to rise. "If we don't do something here and now, all of our precious people will die! We can stop that, and you're just going to sit there!" his voice now a yell, "If we just give up its all over. Believe it! So I say we go through that hole, and beat the hell out of anything that stands in our way!"

Despite the utter lack of tact put into the speech, the squad seemed to get energy from his outburst. The elite who had panicked even was quickly regaining his composure. He looked at the hole for a moment, before frowning again.

"Sir, I apologize for my cowardice a moment ago, but I must ask, how are we sure that route leads anywhere? Its not a door, just a hole ripped open in the hull." he noted

Rtas just turned his head and replied, "Because that creature wasn't born of our hull, it must have come from the surface at some point. We only need to follow its path and we will eventually find ourselves an exit."

The soldiers then convinced of the possibility of success, readied their weapons. They were interrupted however by Rtas holding up his hand to begin another point.

"Naruto, that ability you used earlier, can you use it again? We could use more eyes watching our surroundings." Rtas inquired.

"Sure, _Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!_" he yelled, and five clones popped up around him, "Where do you want them?"

"Warriors, take a staggered formation, I will take point personally." Rtas yelled to the elites and the grunt, the latter getting in the back. "Naruto, place two of your copies on either side of the grunt, and three if front around me, place yourself in the center."

"Right" Naruto nodded, sending his clones to their positions.

"Good." Rtas then turned to the squad, "Warriors, today we have seen many threats that we were assured we wouldn't have to deal with, however, this changes nothing as far as we are concerned. We must report back with the information we have uncovered, and this still requires us securing a position near the outer shell of the station, so that we may call for reinforcements." He finished his statement, glancing over his comrades to gauge their reactions, "I am known as a commander who tends to have low casualties, but don't expect me to say something like, "I'll get you all out alive," as that is not something I can assure, and it would be selfish. We all are the perpetrators of our own destinies. Now, let us perpetrate our push to the surface, sending all who would oppose us back to hell!"

The elites roared their approval, and Naruto gave his typical grin. With that, Rtas primed his plasma sword, turned to face the dark fissure, and stepped inside with his _kage bunshin _escort, the rest of the squad just behind him.

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Zuka walked down the sidewalk, hugging the buildings so as to not get caught in the crowd of merchants going the other way. He noticed he was getting a lot of weird looks from the merchants, but with his appearance it was to be expected, rather, if he wasn't receiving strange looks, it would be cause for suspicion. As he was walking however, he noted that Orda hadn't given him any other orders then to escort Kakashi, and now would be a good time to head to the library to gather more information about the shinobi culture, so as to be better prepared against threats and ruses in the future.

He turned off down an alley for a shortcut, but only got about halfway through, before his vision was replaced with a prairie. He was terribly confused for a moment, before the image faded away and he was back in the alley, except the cloaked figure was standing in front of him with his hands in a jutsu.

"Damn, I guess your brain structure is too unfamiliar for most genjutsu. Disgusting demon." the stranger said, unclasping his hands in favor a grabbing the hilt of a katana on his waist.

Zuka realized that this was an assassination attempt, and reached to turn on his shield generator. The shinobi was too quick however, and Zuka saw him dashing with his katana unsheathed and ready to cut him down. Raising his crested arm to block, Zuka sent out a call for assistance tagged with his position. The ninja's chakra reinforced strength slammed Zuka into the ground, and the sword screeched against his armor. His rifle flew from his hand and hit the wall to his left, and zuka brought his other hand to support his arm against the sword, the end of which was getting dangerously close to his neck

"What are you doing human! We are allies of this village, and we intrusted our lives to your protection, and we have risked our lives to protect it! Do you mean to inform me this means nothing!" Zuka roared at the shinobi, whom could now be identified as an ANBU.

"Don't lecture me on morals, you're nothing but a filthy demon, who took advantage of the Hokage's generosity!"

Zuka finally got enough leverage to force his leg under the ninja, and kicked him off with his hoof. The ninja retaliated by throwing a cluster of shuriken. All but one were avoided by the elite, but the last buried itself deep in his side. Zuka gave a grunt of pain, before shouldering the ninja hard, making him drop the katana and fall on his back a few feet away. Zuka grabbed the katana, then charged the ninja on the ground, who then knocked some boards off the wall with his feet to trip the elite. Zuka stopped his fall on his knees with his hand slamming the head of the ninja, and breaking his mask, and causing the opposite half to fall off and expose his face. He looked to be in his thirties, and had a bit of stubble. The shinobi's arm shot up to hold back Zuka's from stabbing him with the stolen katana.

"So you are doubting his decision?! I was under the impression ANBU swore their loyalty to the Hokage, no matter his actions or reasons for those actions."

"The Hokage couldn't foresee his own death, perhaps he was assured he could keep an eye on you, but now we must act for the safety of our village!"

"What safety! You couldn't prevent the infiltration of the village by Orochimaru's forces, nor could you properly evacuate the Hokage when he found himself engaged in combat! What could you possibly do! All your actions accomplish is lessening the available forces for future operations."

"Shut up monster! I'll send you back to hell!" The ninja gave a strong push to unbalance the elite, before he gave strong head butt, followed by a chakra reinforced palm strike to send him flying, the sword forced from his hands and falling next to the ANBU operative.

Zuka slammed into the ground and slid a few feet on his front, his right hand felt the familiar sleek touch of covenant alloys. He grabbed his rifle, and flipped over on his back placing the barrel on the chest of a now surprised ninja. He pulled the trigger, and sent the ninja stumbling back a couple feet as a large blood spurt flew out the back of his cloak. Zuka pulled the trigger again, causing the ninja to cough up blood, and twice more putting rounds into his liver and heart. The rest of the ANBU's porcelain mast fell off, with some blood dripping from its interior side, and the shinobi collapsed on the ground.

Zuka shakily rose to a stand, and turned to leave, his free hand clasping his side. He noted some dumbstruck bystanders outside the alley who cleared a path for him when he looked at them. As he staggered out however, he heard the ninja's pained voice behind him.

"You haven't won yet demon... I'm not finished."

Zuka turned to look at the defeated warrior, and saw him make a sign with his right hand, Zuka recognized it from some ninja during the sound invasion.

It was used to ignite explosive tags.

Zuka realized that the ANBU may have anticipated failure and must have strapped himself up with explosives, and was now trying to take the elite with him. Zuka hurriedly spun around and started stumbling out of the alley. "Scatter! He is going to detonate explosives! Run!" he yelled to the people around him, who immediately began screaming and running away. Zuka got a few more steps away before the explosion picked him up and sent him sailing across the street. He flailed in the air, before slamming into the ground and rolling to a stop. To weak to move, he simply stared at the flaming holes in the adjacent buildings, before slipping into unconsciousness.

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A/N: Now I know you all have been waiting forever, and this is only a normal length chapter, so if you want to flame me, go ahead, I deserve it. I have no real reason for taking this damn long. I'm still alive, I haven't gotten grounded, never got around to filling an application for a job, and I just wasted a summer where I could have finished this fic.

Now that I'm finished asking for mercy, I pretty much have the direction I want to go with the next couple chapters in mind, so I may be updating again soon (not that you have any reason to believe that.) Also, I plan to edit the shit out of the first few chapters, to make them not so sucky, so if you want to reread, I'll be fixing up the first few chapters in the hours after this post.


	15. opening moves

Everyone thank Islagatt for betaing this chapter, and for giving me some tips throughout. (some of his suggested sentences are changed very little if at all.)

A/N: Well given I always listen to music while I'm writing, I guess I may start doing something I saw another author doing, which is a "listening to" section in the AN. You may or may not find this even mildly interesting.

This chapter: Lilium (saint version), Elfen lied soundtrack

Canta per me, Noir soundtrack

and now reviewer responses.

Dragon man 180: yes, Rtas is half jaw. As for Tsunade, well, if anyone is very observant, they'd see what I have planned there, but if you don't see it on your own then I'm not going to tell you, just know I have something planned.

Islagatt: the ANBU ditched jutsu and tried to kill the elite the conventional way, the thing is, elites are really strong, so once he had started the hand to hand, he was stuck with it and kinda fucked, but he still almost won.

Causiambetta: good to be back

* * *

The mixed squad made their way through the corridor, they had come across more maintenance pathways shortly after their trek through the hole in the hull, and were currently following them till they found a path to the surface. It appeared these corridors were very old, as they seemed unused, and they didn't show up on the schematic, which complicated the squads efforts. Naruto was somewhat relaxed do to the lack of hostiles, and had his hands on the back of his head stretching his arms as he walked. He occasionally noticed flood growths on the walls and floor, similar to those encountered in the mines, though there were fewer of them, and they seemed, shriveled somehow.

"Hey, have you guys noticed anything odd about the flood here? Back where I came from the the ones on the walls and such looked a lot healthier, and we didn't have any of those really strong ones." Naruto said, omitting the gravemind from that statement, due to his apparent singularity.

Onis replied to his statement without facing him, "This has been noted since the disappearance of the gravemind. It seems the creature regulated their growth, and consumption of nutrients. Studies show growths like these to be malnourished, and many flood combat forms have been killed or rendered immobile by the extent of their mutations."

"Eh?" Naruto gave Onis a look

"The flood are dying." He stated simply, a hint of exasperation notable in his voice.

"So, that means if we kill the gravemind..."

"The flood will die out." Rtas finished, walking up to the door at the end of the hall, it beeped to indicate his arrival, but did not open. "Ugh, useless machines. Onis!" he called, the requested elite coming to the door controls and beginning to work on opening it. One of the blue security officers stood in front of the door, his plasma rifle ready to confront any threats that might be on the other side.

Naruto and the grunt stood in the middle of the group clustered at the door, the latter looking at the former occasionally. The grunt finally asked, "Why you so calm? Humans usually mean or scared of us."

"Well, you guys don't seem overly hostile, and I'm kinda used to your looks, so there's really nothing to get worked up about." Naruto replied. The grunt seemed to accept the answer, and went back to contemplating plates on the ceiling.

The door hissed open, revealing a pitch dark crossways. Suddenly a mass lunged out and towards the blue elite's head. The elite dodged to the side, and the creature landed on a shadow clone instead, dispersing it with a bite to its skull. Naruto quickly identified it to the group as the one that killed Ewch. It lunged at the group again, only to be impaled by Rtas's sword from the side, then incinerated by plasma fire from the grunt and blue elites. It was already annihilated when Onis had readied his needlers.

"What a filthy abomination that was." Onis stated. This was followed by some grunts of approval from the group.

Naruto suddenly heard a pained gasp, and felt something wet and slimy spray on his back. He reached his hand back and wiped some off, before bringing it to his face to reveal that it was covered in purple blood. The rest of the group saw this and slowly turned around, to see that the elite who had been guarding the door, was dead and being suspended in the air via a large tentacle protruding through his chest.

The group quickly backed away, before another tentacle lunged out and grabbed the grunt by its foot. Then a huge creature squeezed its way through the door, and revealed itself to be the owner of said tentacles. It was a juggernaught, it name fitting for its huge size and horridly disfigured body. One would have a hard time deciding wether it was human or covenant before its horrid assimilation.

The juggernaught dragged the squirming and screaming grunt along the floor, before picking it up and holding it upside down. Suddenly its tentacle fell in two, and the grunt tumbled to the ground before scampering back to the group. Naruto was in a crouch to the creatures right, a green stained kunai in hand. "Don't. Touch. My. Friends." he said in a low and angry tone.

The creature made no move to indicate it understood, but turned to face him. The elites took this time to open fire on the monster, and superheated ions of plasma and explosive needles buried themselves in the creatures hide. It let out a roar of pain, before flinging the elite corpse at the group like a rag-doll, and forced them to scatter. Naruto then let out a yell and charged the beast with his kunai.

His advance was stopped midair however as he felt a tentacle punch through his stomach, before hitting his spine and turning his world black.

* * *

Jira and Orda felt a sudden pang of worry in the warehouse as they inventoried the equipment in the smaller storage room. They couldn't place a reason for their worries however, and finished their work. As they left, they heard a couple of the warehouse workers over to the side gossiping.

"Hey did you hear, there was an explosion over on the west side this morning, and I heard one of those aliens was involved."

"Oh yeah I did, but you know, I heard he was attacked, and the attacker blew himself up. Least that's what all the merchants were saying, in-between trying to sell me stuff to make my boobs bigger."

"Well that's what you get for being so damn androgynous. I mean come on, you make guys stop conversation to stare."

"It never gets any less disturbing to hear that."

Orda stopped eavesdropping at this point, and opened communications with Qwaar, "Qwaar, report in."

"Reporting, all is clear at the apartment, but Zuka is taking too long to get back from escorting Kakashi. Requesting permission to search for him?"

"Denied, we are going to check his tracker ourselves then search for him. Be very vigilant, rumors are that he was attacked. If you are attacked at our quarters, immediately evacuate by whatever means necessary, we cant afford to lose two warriors."

"Affirmative, be careful."

Orda turned to look at Jira, who was currently clenching his fists and grinding his mandibles in anger. "Those damn ignorant humans not only insult Naruto's sacrifice, but they dare to attack our comrades in broad daylight!" Jira said, growling the whole time. "Maybe I should have just slain those damned counselors on the spot."

"Perhaps, but my orders to you are otherwise, and I wish for you to follow your orders over your emotions, there are still other lives which depend on our lack of retaliation." Orda reasoned. Jira relaxed and let out a sigh, relenting to his superior officer.

Orda motioned Jira to follow him to the phantom, ostensibly so they could check the ships computer. As they entered the warehouse, they saw everyone had left, as was understandable with them not having any more work to do. Jira still felt uneasy for some reason, despite the normality of the immediate situation. They walked up the ramp, and entered the phantom. Heading to the cockpit, they checked the computer, and found Zuka's beacon to be near where the incident was said to occur, thankfully his vitals where still transferring, showing him to be alive, if with a low blood pressure and being unconscious.

Orda set up a nav point, and the moved to the exit of the phantom, when they noticed a cloaked figure towards the main door of the warehouse, vigorously doing something with his hands. It only took a moment to realize it was a jutsu being performed, and he yelled to Jira, "Take cover!" The elites sprinted from the phantom, and dove behind a forklift, just as the ninja yelled and sent his jutsu in the form of a large fireball slamming into the innards of the phantom, before the fireball exploded and blew the phantom apart.

The cloaked figure turned to look at the elites who had climbed out from behind the forklift to view the burning remains of their ship, which now had no hope of being repaired. "That is just a fraction of my strength, you will die here demons, I will avenge my comrade!"

The ninja continued to monologue about his motives and plans for the elites, but Jira simply made a gesture towards Orda, who then returned with a nod. Jira then shouldered his carbine and put two rounds into the ninja's side, who collapsed from the unfamiliar pain of a gunshot combined with the burning heat and radiation from the rounds.

Orda then began briskly moving towards the writhing ninja, speaking as he went, "Now it seems you have attacked us without any motivation, and you are associated with the group who attempted to assassinate my advisor. This was an inconceivably large mistake for you to make. I expect you to cry for mercy, then tell us who it is that sent you, how many of you there are, and who your other comrades are."

Anymore questions that could have been asked where cut off though, by a flurry of smoke capsules exploding just in front of the elite, who could just make out a figure grabbing the wounded man on the ground, and escaping.

"Damn! Cowardly insects! Come back and fight proper! I will slay all who threaten those under my command! Tell your leader I shall not run, and I look forward to hanging him with his entrails!" Orda yelled after the duo, not knowing wether or not they heard him, nor caring.

Jira then walked to his side, and loudly clicked his jaws to get Orda's attention. "Sir, we don't have time for this, we must meet up with Zuka quickly so we can regroup. The enemy doesn't seem to worry about attacking us in daylight as long as they hide their features like that."

Orda looked back on the burning ruins of their phantom, a notes that at least the salvaged equipment in the concrete room would be fine. He pulls the fire alarm next to the door to start the sprinklers and put out the fire. "Understood, lets move." Orda calmly ordered, and the walked out to the street, and turned west to go and find Zuka.

* * *

The captain of the assassination squad was deeply angered by the unsanctioned actions of his subordinates. First Kawasaki had confronted the crimson armored warrior against orders, and then he had gotten to sloppy and let himself fight on the alien's advantage and he failed spectacularly. Then the mans brother, who had managed to not only be placed in the same squad, but had information passed to him on the incident, snapped and left unprepared and mindless to attack the groups commander.

Now the elites were likely on high alert, and another direct attack would be easily noticed by other operatives in the city, and would become a disaster for public relations for both ANBU and the councilors involved in orchestrating the incident. All starting with one mans inability to deal with a well placed insult.

The captain himself somewhat sympathized with the elites situation, and their devotion to their comrades and their honor. Being in his position however, he either had to work the situation so that the elites would be a noticeably minor threat so his orders may be called off, or he had to do as told and eliminate them.

"Damn those freaks, they took my brother!" the wounded man said, "I WILL get vengeance for this."

The captain shook his head, "Save your dramatics for a novel, there is no room for it in this squad or in ANBU. How you managed to become part of this unit with your emotion immaturity is beyond me, and WE are the ones who have to deal with your foolishness."

The brother stopped talking for a moment, before saying in a quieter voice, "Wasn't as if we didn't pre plan it at all. We even tested their leader's strength last night to finalize our strategy."

"I fail to see any strategy or planning in standing in the open ranting while the enemy takes their precious time to nearly kill or capture you. What's more, the fact you premeditated this without consulting me first is even more infuriating. Don't you realize this is a black op! If you are captured, or if some of your equipment was used as evidence against ANBU, it would stain our reputation and honor forever."

The wounded ANBU considered this a moment before he decided to remain silent. If he pursued the matter anymore, it was likely his captain would ensure he never got the chance to avenge his brother. He would wait obediently for the proper chance. Until then, all he had to do was follow orders.

* * *

Naruto woke up in an all too familiar setting, the grimy sewers of his mind scape. He heard a buzzing sound behind him, much like that of a swarm of bees. When he turned around he saw a dark cloud, not resembling anything in particular, but his subconscious told him it was an intruder and a dangerous one. He didn't bother with how he knew that, more concerned with the fact it was moving closer to him

He reached a finger out to touch it, but quickly pulled the hand back when it burned like acid. The cloud seemed to feel the finger, and began rushing forward. Naruto responded by turning around and running as fast as he could down the tunnel, the cloud close behind.

All to soon he came upon the huge bars of the Kyuubi's cage, and a subsequent dead end. Kyuubi was visible just beyond the bars, beginning to snarl at the intruding presence. The cloud soon washed over Naruto, who began screaming, and it continued into the Kyuubi's cage. The kitsune attacked the invader with a wave of demonic chakra, and the mixing energies struck the paper seal holding the cage shut. Suddenly the intruder was gone, and Naruto was unconscious in his own mind scape. Kyuubi was going to try to wake him when he felt his mind being pulled elsewhere.

* * *

Rtas and the others looked on in shock, as the human boy who had quickly befriended them had been impaled upon the creatures tentacle, which had apparently tapped his spine due to his unconscious twitching. Rtas was the first to change his mood, as he began to growl in anger and readied his plasma sword. Suddenly though he noticed a noise coming from the boy, whose right hand rose and grasped the appendage in his stomach. The spec op commander subconsciously identified it as a growl, despite the implausibility of a human making such a noise. More pertinent however was the boy's movement after a grievously fatal wound.

Then the boy quickly ripped his hand back, and tore the end off the tentacle, before removing it from his abdomen. The juggernaught screeched in pain, before the boy dug his fingers into its chest, and forced strong chakra into the creature, who's mutated body couldn't cope with the intake. The force of the energy ripped a hole in the back of the monster, and sprayed its innards over the wall. The creature began to slump over and die, when the boy grunted, then violently threw the body at the far wall, getting it out of the way of the door.

Rtas took a step, before Onis placed his hand on his shoulder, "I know not what that is, but my instincts tell me it is no longer the boy, be careful."

Rtas continued over to place his hand on the boys shoulder. The boy immediately backhanded the elite with enough strength to knock out his shields and slam him hard into the bulkhead they had been using as cover. The elite slumped to the ground dazed by the blow. The rest of the squad quickly gathered around him, checking that he was alright.

The remaining security elite yelled, "Naruto! What is the meaning of this!"

The boy replied with a chuckle, the voice much too deep to be the boys, then said "Well this certainly is amusing. That foolish parasites invasion into the boys mind seems to have affected the seal, quite interesting. It has been far too long since I was allowed into the outside world." he began to chuckle again, and a red mist was faintly visible around him for a couple moments, before it dispersed. At this he stopped chuckling. "Damn, so it is only temporary. It must be the seal using me to keep the body alive. No matter, this may become useful in the future."

The elites readied their guns at the apparently insane human, who turned to face them. They were all felt a instinctual fear when they felt his glare and noticed his eyes. His eyes were now a deep crimson, and had elliptical pupils. Their training had never prepared them for a threat such as this, and the elites were motionless. JuJu, not having much of said training was significantly worse off, and he was shivering from the killing intent coming from the human who had shown him such mercy less then an hour before.

"I apologize for my hostility a moment ago, I was not in the best of moods, nor was I totally coherent with the world around me." He calmly stated. He then finished with a grin that emphasized his rather prominent canines. "I would like your assistance."

* * *

A/N: now, some of you may be going wtf at the mindfuck moment with the flood, I just put that together with thinking of Naruto's messed up mind and seal, and also the flood attack on Cpt. Keyes mind in the halo books.

Shorter chapter, but at least I got this one out in an acceptable length of time. The next one will be longer due to what I want to accomplish with it, but it may take awhile.


End file.
